Sergei Filin, the victim of an acid attack in Russia, will undergo another surgery to try to recover his eyesight. He spoke of the attack on Friday from a hospital on Moscow with REN TV.

Filin, the artistic director of the famous Bolshoi Ballet in Russia, was attacked by a masked man on Thursday when he threw acid into his face as he was returning to his house from the threatre. He suffered third degree burns to the face, head and eyes. It remains unknown who perpretated the attack, but police suspect it was triggered by "envy, rivalry or competition."

Filin's doctors fear for his eyesight. "The doctors' biggest fear is the trauma (on) Sergei's eyes and in the course of two weeks, it will be understood what kind of procedures, what has to be done," Anatoly Iksanov, the director of Bolshoi told Reuters.

"The next operation has been decided, it will happen on Tuesday or Wednesday," he added.

Filin, 42, already underwent surgery on Friday and Ren-TV channel showed him speaking in a hospital room after the attack with his face in bandages.

''I got scared, I thought he was going to shoot me," Filin said. "I turned around to run away, but he overtook me. I was wearing a hood, but he just spilled the acid right up onto my face.''

Meanwhile Moscow's police is searching for the attacker.

"Investigators are questioning those who worked in the theatre, artists," Iksanov said.

An icon of Russian culture, the Bolshoi Theatre is a magnet for tourists and has seen power struggles among dancers and directors throughout more than 200 years of its history.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of those conflicts, whether driven by egos or artistic conviction, have been played out in public.

After the tightly-controlled three-decade tenure of Yuri Grigorovich ended in 1995, the Bolshoi Ballet went through five artistic directors before the appointment in March 2011 of Filin, who joined the Bolshoi's ballet troupe in 1988.