Hundreds feared buried after Russia destroys Mariupol theater serving as shelter

KYIV, Ukraine — Authorities in Ukraine’s besieged port city of Mariupol said Wednesday that Russian forces hit a theater where “hundreds” of civilians were taking shelter.

City authorities were trying to establish the number of casualties, but their efforts were hampered by the fact that residential neighborhoods were under shelling.

“Russia purposefully destroyed the Drama Theatre, where hundreds of people are hiding,” Mariupol city authorities said in a statement on Telegram.

Officials posted a photo of the theater building, whose middle part was completely destroyed, with thick white smoke rising from the rubble. Officials said a bomb was dropped on the building from an airplane.

“It is impossible to find words to describe the level of cynicism and cruelty, with which Russian invaders are destroying peaceful residents of a Ukrainian city by the sea,” the official statement read.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted before and after photos of the theater, calling the shelling a “war crime.”

Another horrendous war crime in Mariupol. Massive Russian attack on the Drama Theater where hundreds of innocent civilians were hiding. The building is now fully ruined. Russians could not have not known this was a civilian shelter. Save Mariupol! Stop Russian war criminals! pic.twitter.com/bIQLxe7mli

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— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 16, 2022

“Russians could not have not known this was a civilian shelter. Save Mariupol! Stop Russian war criminals!” he said.

The Maxar satellite imagery firm said images from Monday showed that prior to the theater being bombed, the word “children” had been written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building.

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1504186137186910217

A video shared online apparently showed the theater filled with displaced people hunkering for safety sometime before it was bombed.

The video shows most of the people in the theater were women and children. It was not immediately known when it was filmed.

Drama Theater from the inside before the #Russian bombing

Just look at how many children are there… pic.twitter.com/Sgg4q8gPmP

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 16, 2022

City official Petro Andruishchenko was quoted by CNN as saying that the theater was the city’s largest shelter.

“According to preliminary data, more than a thousand people were hiding there,” he said. “The probability of getting there to dismantle the rubble is low due to constant shelling and bombing of the city.”

Several appeals for humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from Mariupol went unheeded, until Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that about 30,000 people had fled in convoys of cars. Airstrikes and shells have hit the maternity hospital, the fire department, homes, a church, and a field outside a school. For the estimated hundreds of thousands who remain, there is quite simply nowhere to go.

The surrounding roads are mined and the port blocked. Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water.

People were burning scraps of furniture in makeshift grills to warm their hands in the freezing cold and cook what little food there still is. The grills themselves are built with the one thing in plentiful supply: bricks and shards of metal scattered in the streets from destroyed buildings.

Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege, but many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling. They have told families to leave their dead outside in the streets because it’s too dangerous to hold funerals.

Many of the deaths documented by the AP were of children and mothers, despite Russia’s claims that civilians haven’t been attacked. Doctors say they are treating 10 civilians for every injured Ukrainian soldier.

.@hrw spoke to 2 people who fled #Mariupol yesterday who said the drama theater that was attacked today had at least 5-800 civilians sheltering inside.

????The attack raises serious concerns that it was disproportionate, indiscriminate and a potentially a war crime.???? pic.twitter.com/Hb1h5OgqB0

— Richard Weir (@rich_weir) March 16, 2022

The city stands squarely between regions controlled by the Russia-backed separatists — about 10 kilometers (six miles) to the east at the closest point — and the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. The capture of Mariupol would give the Russians a clear land corridor all the way through, controlling the Sea of Azov.

This agony fits in with Putin’s goals. The siege is a military tactic popularized in medieval times and designed to crush a population through starvation and violence, allowing an attacking force to spare its own soldiers the cost of entering a hostile city. Instead, civilians are the ones left to die, slowly and painfully.

Putin has refined the tactic during his years in power, first in the Chechen city of Grozny in 2000 and then in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016. He reduced both to ruins.

“It epitomizes Russian warfare, what we see now in terms of the siege,” said Mathieu Boulegue, a researcher for Chatham House’s Russia program.