The Russians are preparing for the opening of the drama theater in Mariupol: what it looks like now

"The place, which became one of the places of the biggest war crime of the Russian invaders, is now being turned into a platform for Russian performances and concerts," the mayor's office emphasizes, adding that the Russians will actually "sing and dance" on the bones of the fallen Mariupol citizens.

"This "mysterious Russian culture" exists to erase the traces of Russia's genocidal crimes," Olena Galushka, co-founder of the International Center for Ukraine's Victory (ICUV), commented on the actions of the Russians. The Mariupol Drama Theater was built in 1956-1960 in the style of Soviet monumental classicism. According to the project, the theater had two stages: a large one for 800 seats and a small one for 70.

Above the main facade, a pediment with a developed sculptural group was placed, where metallurgists and farmers were depicted as representatives of the "main professions" of the Azov region. In 1983, the Donetsk Academic Regional Academic Drama Theater in Mariupol, as it was called from the beginning, received the status of an architectural monument.

On March 16, 2022, during the full-scale invasion of the Russian Armed Forces into Ukraine, the Russian military dropped an aerial bomb on a theater in Mariupol. They were not stopped even by the huge inscription "Children" on the square in front of the building, where 1,000 to 1,200 civilians were hiding from the bombings. The exact number of victims is still unknown. According to various estimates, between 300 and 600 people were killed that day.

After the occupation of the territory, the Russians first of all surrounded the scene of their crime with a fence in order to hide the dissection of the rubble with the bodies of the dead and to avoid documenting the evidence. Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov published on his channel intercepted conversations about how the removal of the dead from the drama theater in Mariupol was organized.

In particular, for these purposes, they even asked to bring a tractor with a carriage and equipment for transporting "two hundred". In July 2022, the Mariupol City Hall reported that the occupiers had conducted an "investigation". They said that the cadaverous smell in the theater was not due to the hundreds of people killed in the Russian air raid, but due to the hidden storage of rotten fish.

"As predicted, the occupiers said that the explosion was from the midst of the Ukrainian army, and only 14 people were killed. This is another lie that will be used for propaganda purposes," the city council stated. It is also indicated that the investigators did not pay attention to the testimonies of survivors, did not analyze satellite images and radar data taken immediately before and immediately after the attack.

Amnesty International experts concluded in their thorough report on the investigation that the Russian military apparently deliberately hit the theater, knowing that hundreds of civilians were hiding there. They probably dropped two 500-kilogram bombs that detonated simultaneously. In August 2025, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ruslan Kravchenko, said that the Prosecutor's Office of the Donetsk region informed the Lieutenant General of the Russian Armed Forces about the suspicion in absentia.

He is accused of violating the laws and customs of war during the battles for Mariupol. The name of the war criminal was not mentioned, but it was about the commander of the 4th Army of the Southern Military District of the Aerospace Forces. Since 2019, this position has been held by Lieutenant General Ihor Miroshnychenko.