The city soon ordered the entire building opened as a bomb shelter, given its size, its unusually sturdy walls and its large basement. About 60 people spread out in a building with an audience capacity of 600, according to Elena Bila, who was a stage manager there for 19 years.
The actors, designers and administrators who ran the theater took refuge there a few days later, on March 5. The Russian siege of Mariupol started in the first days of March. Last July, they ordered all performances to be conducted in Ukrainian. It was once called the Russian Dramatic Theater, but local authorities removed the word "Russian" from the name in 2015. The elegant theater had stood in a square in the heart of Mariupol for more than 60 years, a stone building with white pillars, a classical frieze, and a distinctive red roof. With Mariupol cut off from access, many fear the bombing of the theater presages more war crimes that have yet to be discovered. The city's fate is now hanging in the balance, and officials say around 20,000 civilians died during the Russian siege. Mariupol has taken on outsize importance as a symbol of the devastation inflicted by Russian forces and of the resistance from Ukraine. Satellite image (c) 2022 Maxar Technologies. Maxar satellite imagery closeup of the extensive damage of the Mariupol Theater and surrounding buildings on March 29, 2022, in Mariupol, Ukraine. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
"This strong witness testimony will be important in establishing that (Russian illegal) conduct was widespread or systematic," said Gow, who also served as an expert witness at the U.N. James Gow, a professor of international security at King’s College London, said documenting what happened at the theater is critical to establishing a pattern of crimes against humanity in Ukraine. And not one person doubted that the theater was destroyed in a Russian air attack aimed with precision at a civilian target everyone knew was the city’s largest bomb shelter, with children in it. None of the witnesses saw Ukrainian soldiers operating inside the building. The AP investigation also refutes Russian claims that the theater was demolished by Ukrainian forces or served as a Ukrainian military base. The survivors primarily left through the main exit or one side entrance the other side and the back were crushed. Many survivors estimated around 1,000 people were inside at the time of the airstrike, but the most anyone saw escape, including rescuers, was around 200.
They also said the rooms and hallways inside the building were packed, with about one person for every 3 square meters of free space. The government estimated early on that about 300 people died and has since opened a war crimes investigation, according to a document obtained by the AP.ĪP journalists arrived at a much higher number through the reconstruction of a 3D model of the building's floorplan reviewed repeatedly by direct witnesses, most from within the theater, who described in detail where people were sheltering.Īll the witnesses said at least 100 people were at a field kitchen just outside, and none survived. With communications severed, people coming and going constantly, and memories blurred by trauma, an exact toll is impossible to determine. The AP also drew on two sets of floor plans of the theater, photos and video taken inside before, during and after that day and feedback from experts who reviewed the methodology. The AP investigation recreated what happened inside the theater on that day from the accounts of 23 survivors, rescuers, and people intimately familiar with its new life as a bomb shelter. That's almost double the death toll cited so far, and many survivors put the number even higher. An Associated Press investigation has found evidence that the attack was in fact far deadlier than estimated, killing closer to 600 people inside and outside the building. Amid all the horrors that have unfolded in the war on Ukraine, the Russian bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol on March 16 stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date.