Did Ukraine's Azov regiment blow up the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol on March 16, 2022, after evacuating local residents sheltering inside? No, that's not true: Russian warplanes very likely dropped two bombs on the theater, based on aerial and satellite photography showing the aftermath of the blasts and witness testimony reported by independent news media and human rights groups.
The claim appeared in a video on March 16, 2024, the second anniversary of the attack, no longer online but archived here on TikTok. It was posted by @sgtcoala7, an account that has since been removed. Among others, the man in the video said (translated from Czech into English by Lead Stories staff):
It happened differently. There was no air raid on the theater in Mariupol. The Azov regiment nationalists put mines under the theater. They put explosives on the roof. They put explosives underneath [the building], and evacuated people. Then they just blew up the theater. This is true.
This is what the post looked like before being removed from the platform:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Mar 20 08:23:00 2024 UTC)
An Associated Press investigation, published on May 4, 2022 (archived here), cited witnesses who heard planes approaching from the sea and either saw the explosion or experienced it firsthand in or near the theater. According to the AP estimate based on interviews and floor plan analysis, some 600 civilians were killed in the attack.
A report by Amnesty International (archived here) analyzed evidence, "including 53 first-hand testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the attack and its aftermath, 28 of whom were inside or adjacent to the theatre at the time of the attack; satellite imagery from immediately before and shortly after the attack; radar data from before and after the attack; authenticated photographic and video material provided by survivors and witnesses; two sets of architectural plans; and open-source information." Its report, issued 3½ months after the attack on the theatre, found:
On 16 March 2022, shortly after 10am, a Russian air strike destroyed the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine. At the time of the attack, hundreds of civilians were in and around the theatre; many were killed. The theatre was clearly recognizable as a civilian object, perhaps more so than any other location in the city. The evidence Amnesty International has gathered demonstrates that the attack was a war crime.
The report concluded the bomb used was most likely an unguided 500-kilogram aircraft bomb, saying:
The damage produced by the explosion is consistent with the detonation of two, but plausibly one, large aerial bombs, dropped at the same time, that struck close to one another within the envelope of the target.
It also reports that a plausible alternative theory is a Russian cruise missile. However, it notes that if such a weapon were used, the high accuracy of the weapon would mean the theatre was targeted, something the report finds no evidence to support.
Regarding the number of casualties, the report found:
Many people were killed by the strike. Many others were seriously injured. The precise number of casualties is not known. Citing eyewitnesses, the Mariupol City Council announced on its Telegram channel nine days after the strike on the theatre that about 300 people had been killed. An investigation by the Associated Press, published in May, concluded that as many as 600 may have died.134 Amnesty International was not able to make a precise estimate of fatalities; the evidence indicates, however, that the count is much smaller than previously reported.
