MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. Experts have proved that back on March 16 the drama theater in Mariupol was blown up from the inside, Vitaly Kiselev, an aide to the interior minister of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), said on Monday.

"Investigators have established that some boxes were carried to the theater three-four days before the explosion. They were small boxes, like the ones for bullets, some 50X50 centimeters. <…> When they carried these boxes, they fixed some wires to them. Probably, something went wrong and an explosion occurred. But this explosion was inside the building, not outside it," he said in an interview with the Solovyov Live television channel.

According to the Russian defense ministry, the theater was blown up by the Azov battalion nationalists on March 16. Kiev tried to place the blame for the blast on Russian forces, but the Russian defense ministry refuted these accusations. On May 20, the Azovstal plant in Mariupol was completely liberated from Ukrainian militants.