Russia is preparing a fake "investigation" about the events in the Mariupol Drama Theater, as a result of a Russian strike on which about 600 people were killed . This was reported by the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine in the Telegram channel.
According to intelligence, with the help of the “investigation”, the Russian side wants to lay responsibility for the crime on Ukraine. Russia will try, with the help of several film crews and TV channels, to prepare staged videos that supposedly should “prove” that the explosion occurred indoors, the GUR notes. Russia will also claim that all the destruction occurred allegedly as a result of the detonation of a large amount of explosives, and the number of victims was no more than 14 people.
“Russian propagandists even found so-called “witnesses” who saw how people in military uniforms brought boxes inside the building the day before.”
Earlier, Aleksey Kutsurubenko, head of the investigative department of the DPR General Prosecutor’s Office, had already voiced the version that the explosion in the drama theater “occurred from within through the fault of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, a non-enveloped device allegedly exploded in the building, as a result of which 14 people died. However, he confirmed that a large number of civilians were initially hiding in the drama theater. Kutsurubenko told RIA Novosti that all these residents allegedly left the theater before the Russian strike. At the same time, back in May, it became known that the Russian military could have removed some of the human remains from the site of the airstrike in order to hide the number of victims.
The attack on the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater in Mariupol was inflicted on March 16 by Russian aircraft. In June, the international human rights organization Amnesty International, during the investigation, concluded that the Russian strike on the drama theater in Mariupol was a war crime. Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said the International Criminal Court should investigate the crime. Among other things, the human rights organization commissioned the physicist to build a mathematical model of the explosion in order to determine the mass of explosive that would be required to cause such destruction. He came to the conclusion that the Russian fighter dropped two bombs weighing 400-800 kg, they exploded simultaneously. Most likely, the strikes were carried out by Su-25, Su-30 or Su-34 fighters, which were based at nearby Russian airfields and often operated over southern Ukraine.
Associated Press journalists who interviewed eyewitnesses concluded that about 600 people died as a result of the strike. In order to estimate the number of victims, the news agency also used two plans of the theater premises, photographs and videos that were taken both before and after the airstrike, and the conclusions of experts. Before that, the authorities of Mariupol came to the conclusion that 300 people were killed during the bombing of the theater: this figure was given by two surviving witnesses. Due to the inability to find the remains of those who died after a powerful explosion, a police officer and a Red Cross employee concluded that there were fewer than 500 victims. AP suggests that Russian military troops who occupied the territory of Mariupol could have removed some of the human remains from the airstrike site.