The theater in Mariupol before its reopening.Image: keystone
More than three years ago, Russian bombs reduced the theater in Mariupol to rubble, probably killing hundreds of people. Now the Kremlin is having Russian fairy tales performed there.
December 29, 2025, 1:17 p.mDecember 29, 2025, 1:17 p.m
Jannik Sauer / watson.de
There are events from the first months of the Ukrainian war that are burned into the collective memory. The battle for the steelworks near Mariupol, for example, or the Russian capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. And what happened around the Mariupol City Theater still resonates.
The building was destroyed by a Russian airstrike in March 2022, although hundreds of civilians had sought refuge here. Satellite images showed that they had previously written the word “children” in large letters on the forecourt of the theater to protect themselves.
After subsequent investigations, the human rights organization Amnesty International announced that at least twelve people were killed in the bomb attack on the theater. According to the news agency «Associated Press» Russia could have even killed around 600 people with the air strike.
Spectators in the rebuilt theater.Image: keystone
After Russian troops reduced the theater and large parts of the city to rubble, the Kremlin made it one of its prestige projects to rebuild the theater in the occupied city. It was finally opened in a festive ceremony on Sunday.
“The Scarlet Flower” is shown on stage.Image: keystone
The Russian fairy tale “The Scarlet Flower” was shown on stage. Russian television showed images of the gala and the theater’s rebuilt marble staircase and columns. «The theater is experiencing a rebirth together with Mariupol. Russian and Soviet classics return to the stage,” the theater said in a statement about its future plans.
That where Russia suffered a terrible one over three years ago war crimes The fact that Russian plays are now being performed is a shame for many observers.
The Russians destroyed the theater in March 2022.Image: keystone
Russia opens Mariupol Theater: Ex-employees are shocked
“I can’t think of any other word for it than cynicism,” says Yevgeny Sosnovsky, a photographer from Mariupol who worked with the theater for a long time, in a report in the British newspaper “The Guardian». He now lives in Kiev and believes: “This place should be a monument to the residents of Mariupol who died during the Russian occupation of the city, and not an entertainment center.”
Vira Lebedynska, a former actress of the theater, is quoted as saying:
«Entertainment, songs and dances on all the bones? I have a feeling that the souls of the people who died there will not allow them to perform there.”
She now lives and works with a small group of former actors from Mariupol in Uzhhorod in western Ukraine. There they joined forces to form an exile theater and toured Europe last year with the play “Mariupol Drama”.
It is based on the events in February and March 2022 at the Mariupol Theater. “I realized that my mission was to tell the world what had happened there in the theater,” says Lebedynska.
The destroyed entrance to the theater in spring 2022.Image: keystone
However, some other actors remained in Mariupol and continued to work at the theater under the Russian occupation. “For them, the only thing that counts is playing on stage, everything else is secondary. ‘We are outside politics’ is their principle. It doesn’t matter to them whether they are in Russia or Ukraine,” says former theater photographer Sosnovski.
To this day, the Russian leadership denies the air strike on the theater and claims that the undeniable damage to the building was caused by an explosion inside. However, several independent investigations have concluded that Russian bombs were responsible.
Russian authorities have now appointed Igor Solonin, the former deputy director of the Donetsk Circus, as the theater’s new director. At the beginning of the year, in an interview with a Russian journalist, he repeated the claim that the theater had been blown up from the inside. “It was an internal explosion. Either a bomb or an explosive device in the building, or perhaps ammunition was mishandled,” he said.
According to The Guardian, several people who were in the theater at the time of the explosion testified that there were no soldiers or military equipment there.