A Lithuanian filmmaker, who reportedly had been killed in a Ukraine missile strike, actually was shot dead by Russian troops, according to a friend.
Mantas Kvedaravicius, a 45-year-old documentary maker, was shot while in Russian custody in Mariupol, friend Albina Lvutina said, Kasparov.ru reported.
"The soulless Russian military took Mantas prisoner and killed him. And then they just left him," Lvutina said on Facebook.
Earlier reports said Kvedaravicius died after a rocket hit the car.
According to Lvutina, those reports allowed Kvedaravicius' wife to find and retrieve her husband's body from Russian-controlled areas.
"Few people knew about the death, but once the media got hold of the information, it was impossible to contain it," Lvutina said, LRT News reported. "We may have never discovered the truth or even said goodbye to Mantas. He was not killed in his car by a missile, as the media reported. He was shot."
Kvedaravicius' wife, under shelling, found her husband's body and took it to Lithuania.
"His heroic wife did the unthinkable," Lvutina wrote. "She was able to find his body in Mariupol under shelling and take it to her native Lithuania.
"So that she herself would not be killed, so that the body would not be destroyed, it was necessary to do this in secret."
Kvedaravicius was best known for his war-zone documentary Mariupolis, which premiered at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival.
"We lost a creator well known in Lithuania and in the whole world, who, until the very last moment, in spite of danger, worked in Russia-occupied Ukraine," said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, who mourned the death in a statement, Deadline reported.
Amnesty International had awarded Kvedaravicius' 2011 film Barzakh, shot in the Russian region of Chechnya, a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
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