“The Mariupol Drama Theater no longer exists”, Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko wrote on Twitter on Friday., accompanying his message with a video in which we can see an excavator destroying a wall. This city in southern Ukraine it has been occupied by the russians since may.
For him, “this is an attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate murder of Ukrainians by the Russians. The aggressor country does not even try to hide its intentions to erase everything.
The Minister refers to the bombing of the Mariupol theater last March, at the beginning of the conflict, when civilians had taken refuge there. The attack had been particularly criticized because the words “children” had been written around the building to prevent any shelling.
According to local authorities, around 300 people died under the rubble of this building, but other estimates put the number of victims even higher.
The Russians claim that the destroyed parts could not be restored
The bombing was “clearly a war crime,” Amnesty International said at the time. It is obvious to the Ukrainian authorities that the Russians are destroying this theater to erase possible evidence of their crimes.
“These ruins were a problem for the Russians and served as proof of their crime” written in Twitter a branch of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. But “even without physical access to the scene of the tragedy, the Ukrainian and international investigation have sufficient grounds to conduct an investigation.”
The current director of the theater Igor Solonin assured the Russian state media Tass that “only part of the building” was voluntarily destroyed, because it could not be restored, and that the building would be renovated by the end of 2024.
In this same article, it is also noted that the destruction of the theater is due to the shelling of the unit of Ukrainian Azov fighters, regularly accused by the Russians.
Source: BFM TV
