This past Wednesday, the Russian invasion forces reportedly targeted and bombed a prominent theater in the port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, despite the fact that the word “children” was clearly marked outside the building being used as a bomb shelter in an attempt to tell the fighting forces that civilians, including a lot of children, were taking refuge in the theater. Mariupol has been heavily attacked recently and suffered extensive damage over the past few weeks as the encroaching invasion forces have repeatedly targeted the city through both ground and air means, making it a point to attack no military installations.
This past Thursday, it was reported by The Washington Post that the authorities in Ukraine stated “it was not immediately clear how many people were killed or injured in the strike, with the extent of the damage and the near-constant bombardment making inspection difficult.”
In a statement released via Telegram, a well-known encrypted messaging application, the city council of Mariupol said that the Russian invasion forces had “purposefully and cynically destroyed the Drama Theater in the heart of Mariupol.”
“Today, the invaders destroyed the Drama Theater. A place, where more than a thousand people found refuge. We will never forgive this,” stated the council in the release.
“It is still impossible to estimate the scale of this horrific and inhumane act because the city’s residential areas are continually shelled,” continued the council.
The preliminary reports feared that there was the possibility of finding hundreds of innocent civilians trapped inside the ruined building, with a large number most likely dead.
That morning, however, various other news sources issued reports stating that survivors were managing to crawl out of the rubble of the bomb shelter underneath the theater, as reported by city officials.
“The bomb shelter held. Now the rubble is being cleared. There are survivors. We don’t know about the number of victims yet,” stated mayoral adviser Petro Andrushchenko in comments to Reuters.
Serhiy Taruta, a Ukrainian lawmaker, went on to add, “After a terrible night of uncertainty, on the morning of the 22nd day of the war finally good news from Mariupol! The bomb shelter has held.”
“People are coming out alive!” stated Taruta.
Sitting snugly on an estuary leading to the Azov Sea, Mariupol is highly important to both Ukrainians and Russians due to its extreme strategic and symbolic significance. The port city is known as one of the busiest ports annually in Ukraine and holds a prime geographic spot for the Russian invasion forces.
For Russia, taking this city would be a marked important victory as a way to hurt the morale of Ukrainian troops and also to stop a key vector from which humanitarian aid and supplies have been funneled into the country.
“Every town — especially such a big city, and quite symbolic as well — lost by the Ukrainian government undermines the morale of the Ukrainian side and encourages the Russian rebels to go farther and farther,” stated Oleksiy Melnyk, a military expert from the Razumkov public policy center, to Radio Free Europe in comments back in 2015.
The theater “hosted plays, concerts and festivals” and “was a cultural hub in the center of Mariupol,” reported The Washington Post.