He was known almost exclusively in his country, Russia, although he won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival, which gave him enormous prestige. Actor Sergey Puskepalis died on September 20, 2022, during the Ukrainian War, while traveling in an armored minibus to deliver humanitarian aid to pro-Russian paramilitaries in Donbass. “He died in a traffic accident along with the driver when they were moving a Ford Transit to Moscow, where the vehicle was to be painted with camouflage to be delivered to the military in Donbas,” a police source quoted by the Russian agency TASS reports.

Born on April 15, 1966, in Kursk, Oblast, Sergey Puskepalis  studied at the Saratov School of Drama, before going on active duty in the Soviet Army. He then worked as an actor in the Saratov Youth Theater .

Subsequently, Sergey Puskepalis  played characters in 25 national films, including  Panic in the subway . Battle for Sebastopol ,  Black Sea ,  The Icebreaker  and The First Oscar , as well as directing the feature film Klinch . His most notable role was in the film Kak ya provyol etim letom ,  set in a remote weather station in the Arctic, for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival.

His latest work was  On the Edge ,  directed by  Eduard Bordukov . It tells the story of the veteran Russian fencing champion Aleksandra Pokrovskaya, who sees her reign threatened by the arrival of the promising young Kira Egorov to the sport’s elite.

He was always an environmental conscious activist. “The Russian people have not yet lost their ecological essence, they have not yet been completely poisoned by the advantages of innovations that are offered to humanity,” he explained in an interview. Married to Elena Puskepalis, the couple had a son, Gleb, born in 1992. A firm supporter of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, before his death  . Sergey Puskepalis  served as artistic director of the Yaroslavl Drama Theater.