A resourceful AP investigation puts the likely toll of Russia’s strike on a theater serving as a bomb shelter at double what was previously reported — and tells survivors’ harrowing stories.
In the latest in a continuing series of stories documenting potential war crimes in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a deeply reported, innovative and meticulous AP investigation broke the news that the deadliest apparent war crime so far in Ukraine — the Mariupol theater airstrike — killed twice as many people as previously thought — 600 or more.
AP’s first full-blown visual investigation drew on the accounts of 23 survivors, two sets of floor plans, photos and video taken inside the destroyed theater, and a 3D model of the theater created with input from experts. The AP team calculated the density of people in different places in the theater at the time of the attack, running the findings by witnesses and consulting with experts on the methodology.
Lori Hinnant, Paris-based member of AP’s global investigations team, launched the reporting, working with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko — both of whom had reported from Mariupol in the early weeks of the Russian assault on the city — to track down survivors, then interview and re-interview them. Survivors were especially hard to reach because Mariupol is no longer accessible, but the recollections of the people the team did find were essential to research on the attack and the texture of the project, which would not have been possible without photographer Evgeniy Maloletka’s portraits of survivors and his efforts to source independent video and photos of the theatre before it was ever a bomb shelter, when it was filled to the brim with those sheltering in place, and in the aftermath of the airstrike.
Digital media journalist Marshall Ritzel spent long days transforming all the reporting into a 3D model of the theater and talking through the project’s methodology in an impressive example of how visual investigative techniques can advance a story. His powerful animated diagrams with annotations complemented the text reporting and the other visual formats. Top stories photo editor Alyssa Goodman pulled all the elements together in an arresting presentation.
People shelter in the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, used as the main bomb shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 7, 2022, in Mariupol. The March 16 bombing of the theater stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the Russian war on Ukraine.
Lev Sandalov via AP
The sun rises behind the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, June 27, 2019.
Lev Sandalov via AP
Volunteers and municipal workers clear an area outside the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, April 27, 2022. The theater was hit by a Russian airstrike on March 16, as it served as the city’s main bomb shelter.
AP Photo / Alexei Alexandrov
The Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, is shown on March 14, 2022, left, two days before the Russian airstrike on the building, and on March 29, in photos provided by Maxar Technologies.
Maxar Technologies via AP
The gutted interior of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 4, 2022, after a March 16 airstrike on the building where about 1,000 people were sheltering.
AP Photo / Alexei Alexandrov
At left, pictures hang on the wall of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sept. 10, 2018. At right, seen on April 4, 2022, the same area is gutted following a March 16 Russian airstirike on the building.
Lev Sandalov via AP (left); AP Photo / Alexei Alexandrov
A frieze on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 4, 2022, damaged in the March 16 Russian airstrike on the building where about 1,000 people were sheltering.
AP Photo / Alexei Alexandrov
A truck passes the ruins of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 27, 2022, following the March 16 airstrike as the building was being used as the city’s main bomb shelter.
AP Photo / Alexei Alexandrov
Dmitriy Yurin, who was near the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol on March 16, 2022, poses for a photo in Lviv, Ukraine, April 3, 2022. After the airstrike, Yurin ran to help, dragging those still alive to a nearby park. One young woman — maybe 25 years old — stands out in his memory. He stuttered as he recalled her face. She was laid on a bare winter flowerbed, still conscious. But she died in front of him.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
Victoria Dubovytska, survivor of the March 16 attack on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, poses for a photo at a shelter in Lviv, western Ukraine, March 31, 2022. When the bomb exploded, Dubovytska was in the theater’s projection room with her two children.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Victoria Dubovytska, survivor of the March 16, 2022 attack on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, embraces 6-year-old son Artem at a shelter in Lviv, western Ukraine, March 31, 2022. Victoria Dubovytska, survivor of the March 16, 2022 bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, poses for a photo at a shelter in Lviv, western Ukraine, March 31, 2022. Dubovytska was in the theater’s projection room with her two young children when the airstrike hit; they were thrown against a wall and blankets fell on 2-year-old Anastasia, shielding her from slabs of falling debris. “I dragged her out. … It was a miracle she survived,” Dubovytska recalled.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Maria Radionova, survivor of the March 16 attack on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, speaks during an interview with the AP in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, March 22, 2022. Radionova was standing on the steps at the entrance to the theater when the airstrike hit. Her two dogs were still inside. “They were all I had,” she said, crying. “This (was) actually my family. … I cried there for probably two hours.”
AP Photo / Mstyslav Chernov
Maria Kutnyakova, an IT specialist who was near the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol when it was hit by a Russian airstrike on March 16, poses for a photo at the Lviv Regional Academic Puppet Theater in Lviv, Ukraine, April 2, 2022. Her mother and sister were inside the Mariupol theater at the time of the attack. All survived and the family took refuge in the Mariupol Philharmonic auditorium which came under shelling the same evening. “I wasn’t killed in the theater, but I’m going to die in the philharmonic,” Kutnyakova told herself bitterly. “God, this is my cultural program for the day.”
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
Galina Kutnyakova, a teacher and survivor of the March 16 attack on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, poses for a photo at the Lviv Regional Academic Puppet Theater in Lviv, Ukraine, April 2, 2022. Kutnyakova escaped the airstrike out a side door of the theater; with her two daughters she found shelter in the auditiorium of the Mariupol Philharmonic, which also came under shelling the same evening.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
Yulia Marukhnenko, who was renting an apartment near the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, poses for a photo in the Dnipro Academic Drama & Comedy Theatre in Dnipro, Ukraine, March 27, 2022. Following the March 16 bombing of the Mariupol theater, Marukhnenko, trained in first aid and with a full kit on hand, found herself facing problems no first aid could begin to help: limbs, bodies with no limbs, compound fractures. She said she helped pull the last survivor — a woman named Nadia — from the rubble about six hours after the airstrike. Nadia told rescuers that the explosion pulled her young son and husband away and they died in the theater’s basement.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
Actors at the Lviv Regional Academic Puppet Theater rehearse a performance in Lviv, Ukraine, April 4, 2022, dedicated to the victims of the attack on the Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
The resulting package offered a vivid, detailed narrative of the events inside the theater on March 16, including elements that had not previously been reported, such as the story's lead — a woman clad only in a bathrobe, covered in plaster dust, walking atop bodies to escape.
The story was widely used by members, with AP cited in headlines by prominent news organization. The piece earned more than 200,000 pageviews on AP’s digital platforms.
For an investigation that harnessed the power of all formats to break news on the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the Russian war on Ukraine, the team of Hinnant, Ritzel, Chernov, Stepanenko and Goodman is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
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