The eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol has been under siege by Russian invaders for weeks, suffering rocket bombardments and air strikes. The beautiful, historic Donetsk Regional Drama Theater in that city was being used as a shelter for hundreds of civilians, including many children. On the grounds of the theater, the Ukrainians had written "children" in Russian, so that Russia's pilots would avoid striking the theater. Their hope in whatever decency remained in Putin's forces vanished when the structure was brutally leveled in an air strike, and it's unknown how many of the civilians survived:
"Hundreds of people were thought to have taken shelter in the theater amid the ongoing Russian siege of Mariupol. Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in the coastal city and as many as 2,500 civilians have died in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials estimate.
'After an awful night of not knowing, we finally have good news from Mariupol on the morning of the 22nd day of the war. The bomb shelter [of the theatre] was able to hold. The rubble is beginning to be cleared. People are coming out alive,' the former Donetsk region head Sergei Taruta wrote in a Facebook post Thursday.
It was not yet clear whether all those who sheltered in the theater had survived." (our emphasis)
Yesterday, President Biden may have spoken emotionally when he called Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a "war criminal," because ultimately that will be up to international courts of law to decide (and the designation may give Putin incentive to dig in). But the ongoing deliberate destruction of the civilian population in cities across Ukraine by the Russian aggressors is building the strongest case possible for war crimes prosecution.
For context, the theater before the attack, via Mariupol city government:
The civilian shelter / theater after the attack, via Sky News (BBC's report here):
