On March 16, 2022, Russia’s air force dropped two bombs on the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre in Mariupol, a landmark in the town’s center. According to Ukrainian official reports, at least 600 civilians were sheltering in the basement of the building at the time. Images from the air showed “ДЕТИ” (in Russian “Children”) written in huge capital letters on the square in front of the entrance to make it clear to pilots that the theater was full of children.
Two days later, Mariupol City Council reported that nearly 130 survivors had been pulled from the basement. A week on, it reported, citing eyewitnesses, that the bombs had killed about 300 people.
A subsequent independent investigation ... suggests the number of fatalities may have reached 600 ...
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Russian forces rolled into Mariupol, a bustling Black Sea coast city, in the first months of its assault in 2022 and imposed a brutal, nearly three-month siege that resulted in thousands of deaths – 8,000 according to Human Rights Watch, and 22,000 according to the city’s exiled Ukrainian municipal council.
The city on the Sea of Azov was devastated and some 300,000 of the pre-conflict population of 540,000 fled. The UN said 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged in the siege. Russia has since sought to turn Mariupol into a new symbol of prosperity in the parts of Ukraine it controls and many East Asians from far-flung Siberia as well as Chechens and other Caucasians have flocked to the city.
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“There were so many people in the theatre during the bombing and a lot of people were killed there,” said Ihor Kytrysh, an actor who had been performing at the Mariupol theatre since 2000, and is now living in western Ukraine.
“It’s like performing a play on the bones of the dead." ...
In an interview with the Moscow-based news site Moskovsky Komsomolet, Igor Solonin, the theatre's Russian-appointed cultural director, was asked to comment on criticism from Ukrainians on reopening the theatre. He dismissed those concerns, saying most cities across Europe have seen military action in the past. "Aren't Berlin, Paris and Warsaw built on someone else's bones?” Solonin told the publication, in an interview published Nov. 25.
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