AP investigation finds evidence that the Russian bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol was far deadlier than estimated, killing closer to 600 people inside and outside the building — almost double the death toll cited so far.
and has since opened a war crimes investigation, according to a document obtained by the AP.
“This strong witness testimony will be important in establishing that conduct was widespread or systematic,” said Gow, who also served as an expert witness at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.as a symbol of the devastation inflicted by Russian forces and of the resistance from Ukraine. The city’s fate is now hanging in the balance, and officials say around 20,000 civilians died during the Russian siege.
On March 9, a Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital just a few blocks away, and two or three pregnant women moved to the theater for safety, according to two theater employees. The women, along with families with small children, were given the most comfortable dressing rooms on the second floor, along a corridor behind the stage. It would turn out to be their doom.
Any hesitation they might have had about abandoning their home evaporated when the building next door caught fire. Maria Kutnyakova, Galina’s 30-year-old daughter, walked through the entire building in search of free space, noting the full rooms. She left her mother to handle the registration and went out by herself to find her uncle, who lived nearby. They hadn’t seen him in nine days.. She walked a little further, and heard a single plane, much closer.
The explosion threw another man back and face down onto glass. A wounded woman lay nearby in a huge pool of blood. “I understood she was alive,” Dubovytska recalled. “I dragged her out …. It was a miracle she survived.” Someone answered, “Masha Kutnyakova!” With everyone shouting, she couldn’t figure out where the voice came from. It sounded like it came from somewhere in the ground, but only the dead lay there. She thought she was going crazy.
Near the entrance to the parking garage, the force of the blast knocked him to the ground. Yurin, a fisherman, picked himself up and ran to help, moving rubble to drag out those who were alive but couldn’t walk. One young woman — maybe 25 years old — stood out in his memory. He stuttered as he recalled her face.
Trained in first aid, with a full kit on hand, she was facing problems no first aid could begin to help: limbs attached to no bodies, bodies with no limbs, bones sticking out. Those were the ones who died, either on the spot or in the days afterwards in a city with almost no functioning hospitals. One woman had her leg amputated but died anyway.
Nadia was taken to the hospital, and Marukhnenko doesn’t know what happened to her. The dog is with Marukhnenko still.
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