Journalists of Proekt and Spektr websites have carried out an investigation into the murder of Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius in Mariupol in March 2022.
The journalistic investigation, which is based on eyewitness accounts, was published on Friday. According to Proekt and Spektr, Kvedaravičius was killed by separatists from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The investigation identifies three possible suspects: Pavel Budenkov, Alexander Yamkovenko, and Pavel Musienko.
According to the investigation, the Lithuanian filmmaker was murdered on March 27. In Mariupol, he worked on the second documentary film about the war-ravaged city.
On the same day, he was detained together with a minibus driver Alexander when they were trying to evacuate four women and two children out of the city. The driver was later released. He told the women that he and Kvedaravičius were undressed and checked for injuries characteristic of combat operations, as well as tattoos.
The separatists found a bruise on the back of the Lithuanian filmmaker from carrying a bag of one of the women. He was detained “until the circumstances were clarified”.
The women and Alexander remained in hiding waiting for news of their detained companion. In the morning, the group went to the bus where Kvedaravičius’ wife Anna Belobrova was waiting for them.
According to one of the women, Belobrova went to the place where Kvedaravičius was arrested and kept looking for him until April 2. She ended up finding him on a pile of garbage with bullet wounds near the place of his detention.
Belobrova took her husband’s body to the morgue in Donetsk and from there across Russia to Lithuania, where he was buried in his hometown of Biržai on April 9.
The women and the driver successfully made it to the unoccupied Ukrainian territory. They also transported Kvedaravičius’ phone with the video fragments that were used to make the film “Mariupol 2”, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the summer.
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