The theater was supposed to be a safe haven. Its walls were thick and sturdy. People had packed into the basement, foyer and the dressing rooms backstage in the hope of escaping Russia’s bombardment of Mariupol, Ukraine’s coastal city that President Vladimir Putin appears set on seizing at any cost. The word “children” was written in Russian on both sides of the building, to warn Russians against bombing it.

“We thought maybe they’d see there were kids there and not bomb it,” said Alexiy, 34, who left with his wife and 7-year-old son the day before the attack. Yet on the 16 of Match around 10 a.m., a Russian pilot dropped a bomb squarely on the stage and field kitchen. killing around 600 people and leaving some people badly injured, most of whom were women, children, and the elderly.

On 4 May, Associated Press published an investigation of the airstrike. It refuted Russian claims that the theater was demolished by Ukrainian forces or served as a Ukrainian military base. None of the witnesses saw Ukrainian soldiers operating inside the building. And not one person doubted that the theater was destroyed in a Russian air attack aimed with precision at a civilian target everyone knew was the city’s largest bomb shelter, with children in it.

Amid all the horrors that have unfolded in the war on Ukraine, the Russian bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol on March 16 stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date.

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