A year after the tragedy, the displaced residents of Mariupol commemorate the victims of the bombing of the city’s theater, where 1,000 civilians took refuge during the Russian siege, leaving tens of thousands dead.
“The townspeople were there watching [no teatro] security. It was a glimmer of hope in the midst of all the destruction. But it became a trap,” said the coordinator of the memorial event in the center of Lviv, in honor of the victims, Alevtyna Shevtsova, journalist from Mariupol.
To commemorate the deaths, displaced residents of the city lit candles along the recreated “Children” banner in front of the theater, and similar posters appeared in cinemas in eight other cities where thousands of Mariupol displaced people found refuge.
“We must talk about the Mariupol tragedy so that the world does not forget the war crimes committed against people of peace,” emphasized Alevtyna Shvetsova.
When the theater was almost destroyed by the impact of a Russian aviation bomb on March 16, 2022, the city of 430,000 was already surrounded by Russian troops and had been bombed for almost three weeks.
The airstrikes began on March 9, Shevtsova recalls, recalling that they led hundreds of people to lose their homes and converge on one of the city’s symbols, the theater, where local volunteers organized to provide shelter and food to people in need.
“People were everywhere in the theater, in the corridors, in the auditorium, even on the stage, because there was no room in the bomb shelter. The wooden elements and the chairs were used as firewood for cooking,” the journalist recalls.
The bomb completely destroyed the central part of the theater, with some fragments falling near the entrance to the bomb shelter the total number of casualties is unknownpersistent missing residents of the city.
From Ukrainian sources, including the municipal administration, estimates of the total number of casualties range from about 22,000 to nearly 90,000.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 last year has so far led to the flight of more than 14 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced people and more than 7.9 million to European countries – according to data of the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
Estimates currently point to 17.7 million Ukrainians in need of humanitarian assistance and 9.3 million in need of food aid and shelter.
Source: DN
