In large white Cyrillic letters they had written the word on the neatly patterned pavement of the square in front of the Donetsk Oblast Academic Drama Theater: “Дети”—children.
And on the other side of the building, where the fountains normally splash in the central square of Mariupol in the summer, and are colorfully illuminated at night, they painted the lettering, as high-resolution satellite images from the private company Maxar also show.
In the days and nights following Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the Mariupol city government had designated half a dozen public buildings as makeshift air-raid shelters.
Anyone who couldn't find better protection elsewhere could stay here - and the clear aerial indication of the children in the basement and the rest of the building was hoped to deter the Russians from shelling the theater directly.
Reports of burials in mass graves
"I thought at least we're safe here," the survivor Maria Radionova later told SPIEGEL.
But on March 16, the theater was hit hard.
The exact number of people who were in the basement rooms at the time of the attack is not clear.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe later said in a report that up to 1,300 people had sought protection there.
After the attack, which the organization said was undoubtedly deliberate, around 150 people were able to leave the shelters, and another 300 probably died - the fate of the remaining people seeking protection could not be clarified under the conditions of the war.
A reconstruction by the AP news agency concluded that 600 people may have died.
A bomb, believed to have been carried by a Russian plane, destroyed the theater.
Russia, on the other hand, claimed Ukrainian militants hid in the building and eventually blew it up themselves.
A SPIEGEL investigation found no evidence for this claim.
After the attack, as described by eyewitness Radionowa, survivors initially dug for victims with their bare hands.
Rescue teams then struggled for more than a week.
By the end of May, Ukrainian media later reported, debris was removed from the theater and victims recovered.
They were buried in mass graves.
A current satellite image of the theater, also taken by a Maxar satellite, now shows that the Russian occupiers apparently wanted to hide the house until it could be rebuilt - whenever.
For the time being, high scaffolding has been erected around the badly damaged building, over which a printed tarpaulin is stretched.
Among other things, the likeness of the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov can be seen on it.
The concept of hiding eyesores behind a privacy screen is not uncommon in Eastern Europe.
A Russian media report also shows the covering of the theater.
A reporter also takes a look behind the tarpaulin.
He then reports that further clean-up work on the ruins has been suspended for the time being.
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