Russia has put Vitaly Mansky, one of the country’s leading documentary filmmakers and a critic of the invasion of Ukraine, on a wanted list, Russian media reported Tuesday.
Mansky, 58, was recently implicated in a defamation case brought by prominent film director and Kremlin supporter Nikita Mikhalkov.
In a recent Youtube interview, Mansky said “at least 85%” of the budget of the Moscow International Festival, which is headed by Mikhalkov, had been stolen.
“I’m too old to regret saying anything. The fact is that I do not live in Russia and I do not agree with what is happening in Russia,” Mansky told Ostorozhno Media on Tuesday.
Russian journalist and socialite Ksenia Sobchak, to whom Mansky made the allegations about the Moscow International Festival in an interview, said Tuesday she had been summoned as a witness in the defamation case.
But Mansky suggested in an interview Wednesday that his inclusion on the international wanted list might not be connected to the defamation case in which he has not been formally charged.
Mansky, a vocal critic of the Kremlin, moved to neighboring Latvia following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The filmmaker founded ArtDocFest — Russia’s largest documentary film festival in Russia — in 2007 but was forced to halt it this year following attacks by Russian nationalists.
