The occupiers claim that work on “restoring” the theatre has reached the finishing line.

Russia is preparing to reopen a drama theater in Mariupol , the same building it destroyed in March 2022. This was announced by the Mariupol City Council.

“The occupiers claim that work on ‘restoring’ the theater has reached the final stretch. The site, which became one of the sites of the Russian invaders’ greatest war crimes, is now being converted into a venue for Russian performances and concerts,” the statement reads.

The city council announced that the Russians plan to open a theater as early as December to stage “Russian plays and essentially ‘sing and dance’ on the bones of the fallen Mariupol residents.”

They recalled that on March 16, 2022, Russian military dropped two aerial bombs on a theater where civilians from Mariupol and their children were hiding from shelling.Read also:

“The word ‘CHILDREN’ was written in front of the building as a sign of hope for rescue. After occupying the territory, the first thing the Russians did was fence off the crime scene. This was done to conceal the removal of the rubble containing the bodies of the dead and to avoid documenting the evidence,” the city council noted.

Russian strike on Mariupol theater

As UNIAN previously reported, on March 16, 2022, Russian forces bombed the Mariupol drama theater. Hundreds of residents and children took refuge there. The bombing destroyed the central part of the theater, and debris blocked the entrance to the bomb shelter.

According to the Associated Press, 600 people died in the Mariupol drama theater . Journalists established the enormous death toll thanks to a 3D reconstruction of the building’s floor plan, which was repeatedly viewed by direct witnesses to the occupiers’ attack, who described in detail where people were hiding.

In May 2022, it became known that the occupiers had “cleared” the drama theater in Mariupol and removed the bodies of the victims. “Now we will never know how many Mariupol civilians were actually killed by the Russian bomb at the drama theater. The dead are buried under unmarked numbers in a mass grave in Mangush,” said Petro Andryushchenko, advisor to the mayor of Mariupol.

(cuUNIAN 2025