By Galina Korol | 2024-05-15

KYIV -- Russia is busy "rebuilding" the Mariupol Drama Theater, which it notoriously bombed in March 2022 even though local residents wrote the Russian word "children" on the ground outside the building beforehand.

Russia has never disclosed the number of civilians, including women and children, it killed in the air strike. Mariupol residents had been using it as a bomb shelter.

The number of dead is suspected to be in the hundreds.

Everything Ukrainian in the theater has been ruined, say observers, putting it among the Ukrainian heritage and cultural sites destroyed by Russian forces.

In early April, builders released new photos from the construction site where the obliterated theater once stood, the online news outlet 0629 reported on April 5.

"The occupiers say that they're continuing to rebuild the Mariupol Drama Theater. But by the looks of it ... it's more like they're destroying it: the only thing left of the theater that Mariupol residents remember is the front wall," the outlet reported.

Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the lawful mayor of Mariupol, confirmed this assessment.

"The local population actually opposes this construction," Andriushchenko told Kontur. "It says it's impossible and wrong because it's a graveyard. But who's listening to it?"

Everything Ukrainian in the building has been decimated, he said, referring both to the bombing and the "repairs" afterward.

"The place where the stage was, where there was a basement where people died, that part of the theater was torn down to nothing," he said.

"Then they poured concrete, and now they're laying bricks to try to make it look like they're rebuilding," Andriushchenko said.

"The [stone] figures are gone, and the original architectural ensemble no longer exists either."

A bomb and its victims

On March 16, 2022, the day of the bombing, about 2,000 Mariupol residents were sheltering in the theater from Russian bombings.

"As of March 16, there were 2,000 Mariupol residents in the logbook. Of course, not everyone was on the premises. People were constantly moving around," Serhiy Zabahonskiy, an actor at the theater, recalled in a conversation with Kontur.

He had been hiding in the theater with his wife and children since the early days in February 2022 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We knew every inch of the place and we had keys, and when the police came to help and asked who was in charge, people pointed at my wife," Zabahonskiy said.

A few days before the Russians bombed the theater, Zabahonskiy and some other residents wrote "children" in Russian on the ground in front of the building.

The message did not help.

Zabahonskiy was inside talking to a woman when they heard an odd bang.

"I had no idea what it was, I looked at the woman, a fire door flew into her," he said.

"I managed to look at another door and saw it was flying at me. Then ... I saw a ray of light and then a wave, and then suddenly everything went black," Zabahonskiy said.

By some miracle, his family survived.

However, many residents who were in the vicinity of the stage and the basement were not as lucky.

"I'd estimate that I could see that 50-60 people had died, but I don't know how many people were under the rubble. I know that about 15 people were in the field kitchen, and I know that our concertmaster managed to get out of the basement, which also collapsed. About 200 to 300 people in all died," Zabahonskiy said.

Andriushchenko, the mayor's adviser, had an even grimmer estimate.

"According to our estimates, about 400 people were killed during the bombing there," he said.

Covering up mass murder

The occupiers have done everything to cover up their tracks, Andriushchenko said. They started to rebuild the theater in the first weeks after they seized Mariupol.

It is one of a few places where the occupiers extracted all the corpses they found, he said.

"This was the first exhumation, the first investigation of rubble in Mariupol. After they sorted through the rubble, they dumped bleach over everything to eradicate the stench ... Then they removed all the concrete and filled everything in with new concrete," Andriushchenko said.

"There will come a time when Mariupol is liberated, and then the people who died in the theater will ... find peace, and all the criminals who killed [them] will be punished," Zabahonskiy said.

He has already testified to investigators from the International Criminal Court.

"I desperately want to return to Ukraine, but I can't -- [the investigators] told me that I need to be in Europe because now I'm a key witness," Zabahonskiy said.