“Why didn’t the armored car protect?”: The circumstances of the death of Sergei Puskepalis

“Why didn’t the armored car protect?”: The circumstances of the death of Sergei Puskepalis

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Director and actor Sergei Puskepalis died on the M-8 highway near Yaroslavl. On Saturday, as an artistic director, dressed in an official formal suit, he went on stage at the first Russian theater named after Fyodor Volkov in Yaroslavl, opening the XXII International Theater Festival. How the host of the festival congratulated its participants.

On Sunday and Monday, Puskepalis rushed around on festival business, participated in the inauguration of the new governor of the Yaroslavl region. And on Tuesday morning he gave orders regarding the theater from Omsk, which was supposed to play its performance on Tuesday evening. He fussed, not assuming that these were the last orders in his life. On the morning of September 20, he drove towards Moscow in an “armored car”.

“Armored car”, joking with each other in the theater, was called a decommissioned cash-in-transit vehicle, which Sergey specially bought to overtake her to the Donbass. “Our guys really need it,” he said, and in recent days he has been actively collecting everything necessary that this “armored car” should take away to the region blazing in military fire. As employees of the Volkovsky Theater told me, the basement was filled with thermal underwear, which is produced by a factory in the Yaroslavl region. It lay and waited for dispatch.

Life and plans are like a shell tearing the word “suddenly”. It’s hard to believe what happened if you were standing next to Sergei Puskepalis just a few hours ago, saw him enter the stage – a big, kind of bumpkin in a formal suit, pleased that his theater was hosting provincial Russia. He speaks from the stage: “Who, if not us, especially now to talk about Russian literature, about our writers. And I am glad that we are starting the festival with the poems of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.”

The next day he had a full schedule: in the morning the theater, in the afternoon the performance of the film “The Tailor from Brooklyn”, in which Puskepalis, together with Yuri Vaksman, played a poignant story about a person’s life. Vaksman, a fantastic actor, plays an old Jew in it, and Puskepalis plays an insurance agent who comes to him.

On Monday afternoon, when I looked at Yura Waksman at his club “Actor” on Kirov Street, he, still under the strong impression of the closed premiere show, for his own, excitedly told what kind of amazing story they had turned out and how it affects people.

“We filmed this rather chamber story for two years, it takes place in New York,” Yura Vaksman tells me. Neither I, nor he, we yet know what will happen.

Where did you find New York? Or just interior shots?

“You won’t believe it, God seemed to help us. First, covid and you can’t fly anywhere, and then sanctions, but … In Bulgaria, the Americans built a whole block of New York – everything is filmed there. We made it. You understand, Serega plays an insurance agent, but, in fact, in fact, he is an angel who always comes to a person, because he knows that he is already on the verge of his departure from this life.

How was the private screening? How did the audience react?

– What are you, from beginning to end almost cried. Yes, they cried, almost without.

And late in the evening, as soon as the theater from Ulyanovsk played its “Captain’s Daughter”, Sergei reappeared on stage. He came out, presented a diploma, praised the performance and said that the theatrical story about Pugachev was not at all accidental for this theater.

– You know that in the place where the theater now stands, there was a house with a basement, and Yemelyan Pugachev was kept there until the trial. So everything in this life is not accidental.

But the death of himself, which overtook him along the road, which can be called the “road of nobility” – is it accidental?





Yes, Sergei Puskepalis is an actor, beloved, recognizable, artistic director who built his Volkovsky Theater. A creative person with far-reaching plans. And he died like a real man, whom no one obligated to anything, did not ask to demonstrate patriotism. He did as his heart dictates – he traveled to the Donbass, collected humanitarian aid, helped the soldiers in any way he could. He was pleased that he had bought an “armored car” and, together with the driver, drove the former collector car to where it was most needed, but …

It is strange, in general, the cash-in-transit vehicle itself is armored and it is surprising that its armor did not protect Sergey Puskepalis and his fellow traveler. This is yet to be investigated.

The life and death of Sergei Puskepalis: the last photos of the actor

The life and death of Sergei Puskepalis: the last photos of the actor

See related photo gallery

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28873 dated September 21, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Angel for Puskepalis

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