Millions of Ukrainian books, including school textbooks and children's books, have been destroyed in Russian attacks on warehouses and printers. One of the latest incidents targeted a printing press on the edge of Kyiv which was due to supply 10% of Ukraine's schoolbooks, according to BBC News.
Publishers report deliberate destruction
Viktoria Haidai, publishing commercial director, told the BBC she believed the effort was 'deliberate on the part of the Russian Federation'. She said: 'The Russians are also destroying printing houses in an attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation. But frankly they will not succeed.'
Several other publishers have reported attacks in recent days which have hampered their ability to get new Ukrainian literature out to readers. Yuliya Orlova, the co-founder of the Vivat publishing house, wrote on Facebook last week that the firm had 'lost in this lottery'.
Warehouse fires destroy new releases
Despite efforts to move books to the safer western city of Lviv, a large number of new book releases by Ukrainian authors were lost when one of their warehouses and two belonging to their partners burnt down. In her post, she said: 'I don't have the strength for any rallying call. Let's just survive.'
On the same day, poet Ivan Malkovych said a warehouse containing children's books set to be shipped from his publishers A-Ba-Ba-Ga-La-Ma-Ga had been 'destroyed'. It came after several other incidents at the publishing firm's main warehouse, he said, in which Russians 'destroyed our books and blew out the windows and doors'.
In a post on X, he said the publishing staff 'sincerely sympathize with our colleagues whose books were also burned by degenerates', using an offensive term towards Russians. He added: 'Order Ukrainian books. Thank you to everyone who is with us.'
Impact on Ukraine's book output
Free speech advocacy group PEN Ukraine said the August 28 strike on the Kyiv warehouse had burned more than 60,000 books, with damage estimated to cost over 23 million hryvnia (£380,000). It said in a social media post: 'Behind every book is the work of authors, editors, translators, designers, publishers, printers, logistics specialists, and booksellers. All of them work under wartime conditions, when a single Russian attack can destroy the result of months of work and large volumes of books in one night.'
The group listed seven other publishing houses that had completely or partially lost their products, along with the online retailer Book.ua. Local media reported that a third of Ukraine's annual book output – equivalent to around 12 million books – had been destroyed by Russian strikes in just two months.
Ukrainian politician Serhii Babak, who chairs the Kyiv parliament's education committee, said Russia had destroyed the entire print run of textbooks in certain subjects for the coming school year. Earlier this month, a Russian strike led to a serious fire at the Pochaina Book Market, one of the largest markets for literature in Ukraine and a favourite of Kyiv's book lovers.
Russian targeting of Ukraine's culture and heritage has been put in the spotlight this summer, after a strike set the 11th-century cathedral in Kyiv on fire. President Volodymyr Zelensky said: 'This is one of Russia's most serious crimes against Christian culture to date.'
