Survivor of Mariupol Theater Bombing Recounts Russian Attack

When Victoria Dubovytska reached the theater-turned-shelter in the besieged town of Mariupol with her two young children, she was hoping to get information on the much-anticipated "green corridors" to be evacuated out.

But after standing two hours in the cold, she realized there wouldn't be any.

So she took shelter together with hundreds of other civilians inside the theater, many whose homes had already been destroyed, waiting day after day for a way out of the port city.

Then, on March 17, the packed theater was blown apart by a Russian airstrike despite huge white letters on the pavement in front of and behind the theater that spelled out "CHILDREN" in Russian — "DETI" — to alert warplanes to the youngsters inside.

Dubovytska and her children, aged 6 and 2, were inside. They all miraculously survived.

"When the explosion happened I was thrown to the (other) wall," Dubovytska said. She and her children had been sleeping in the theater's projector rooms. The theater was full with people even sleeping in the corridors.

One of the walls that connected to the stage room collapsed, but the other three resisted at first, saving them.

Still, debris flew everywhere, including on her daughter who had been covered in blankets that Dubovytska folded earlier that morning. Over the blankets there was rubble.

"It was a miracle she survived," said Dubovytska, who's 24.

For a moment, she feared they hadn't.

"When the explosion happened, the first seconds you don't hear your child screaming," she recalled.

During those moment she contemplated their death, the possible loss of limbs, but all she wanted was for them to be alive. Then, finally her daughter screamed: "Mama!".

"I understood she was alive and I dragged her out," Dubovytska recounted. She took her son, her daughter, any documents she could find, and ran out of the theater. Half of it had already crumbled.

Fighting on and around the theater meant that rescuers couldn't reach it.

It was only much later through news reports that she realized the rest of the theater had also collapsed.

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