A war on words: why Russian strikes are targeting Ukrainian publishers
In a northern district of the city of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, the street leading to one of the country's largest book storage and distribution centres is quiet and green.
From the outside, the scale of the devastation is invisible, save for the wooden panels replacing the windows.
Upon entering the building, the first whiff of burnt paper sets the scene inside – one of total desolation. Only the shell of this 10,000 m2 warehouse, bigger than a football pitch, remains and it is filled with mountains of ash, scattered piles of burnt books and iron shelves that have been melted and distorted by fire. This is all that's left of the 8 million books that were stored here. The contents of the warehouse were destroyed in the Russian strike of 1 August.
Impact on education
Viktor Kruhlov, CEO of the Ranok publishing house, a leading producer of children's and educational books and one of many that used this distribution centre, recalls the inferno after the Russian drone strikes hit.
"Two explosions followed each other, a few minutes apart. There were around 50 employees on site at the time, and it is a miracle that nobody died. Everything melted because of the temperature after the two explosions."
The loss to his publishing house is immense. Nothing could be saved. At the busiest time of the year for educational publishing, 1 million of the 8 million books destroyed here were schoolbooks.
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"A week later, firefighters are still extinguishing fire hotspots... who would have thought that books would take so long to burn?" he asks, walking across a thick carpet of ashes.
"The Little Prince was somewhere here. I don't think we will find it now."
Pointing at a pile of charred textbooks, he adds: "Those are books for primary school, which were to be delivered across the country the following day. We deliver them to every school. Here is a science book, it's about nature, life, and you can still see this chapter called 'air'."
The destruction of these books will have a lasting impact on education throughout the country, he says.
"Ranok is the main children's publishing house in Ukraine; we publish at least one third of the total number of textbooks in Ukraine. Of course, we have other warehouses across the country, but that was the bulk of our production. This was a huge blow to the book industry." Viktor Kruhlov, CEO of the Ranok educational publishing house, says the effect of this loss of resources on education in Ukraine will be lasting.
Erasure of identity
For Kruhlov, strikes like these are further proof that Russia wants to annihilate all forms of Ukrainian identity.
"The whole world should know about what happened here. We learned that during the Second World War, Nazis would burn thousands of books. Now, Russians routinely destroy millions of Ukrainian books. It is a deliberate strategy to damage Ukrainian culture and identity, because Russia doesn't want to accept a prosperous Ukraine."
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This view is shared by Nata Protas, director of Zhorzh, another publishing house.
"We have known over 400 bans on the Ukrainian language by Russia throughout history. So what happened is an issue of survival of the Ukrainian language and of the Ukrainian nation in general. Russia continues to pose a threat with its imperial narrative, and its will to simply seize or destroy something that is not theirs."
For Protas, Russia's imperialism is why Ukrainian publishing houses must be saved.
"These businesses simply can't disappear, because those strikes aren't simply destroying our book reserves, they are destroying us, our language, our nation and the country as a whole." Russian strikes have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian publishing infrastructure.
Targeted attacks
Zhorzh, a young publishing house founded in Kharkiv in 2016, has lost the bulk of its inventory – 400,000 books, ranging from contemporary fiction and non-fiction for children and adults to anti-stress colouring books.
In the aftermath of the strikes, readers and authors have rallied in support, Protas says.
"Readers were the first to respond, by ordering books, pre-ordering even if they know that it will be very difficult for us to republish. Some of our authors have waived their royalties and advances for the time being, in order for us to use this money for restoration. But realistically we are hoping for financial assistance, maybe at a global scale. So far we haven't received any."
Ranok, Zhorzh and the other publishing houses affected – including Varvar, Fabula, Shche Odnu Storinku, Korali Books, as well as distributor Knyholend – will struggle to reprint their stocks. All have had to temporarily cease operating.
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This strike was not an isolated incident. On 19 July, publishing houses in Kyiv were heavily targeted by a barrage of missiles and drones. Those strikes saw 750,000 books destroyed. On 2 July, 800,000 books were destroyed in similar strikes.
This summer alone, Russia has wiped out more than 9.5 million Ukrainian books – a third of Ukraine's average annual book production of 25 million.
In light of these attacks, the Ukrainian Book Institute is urging the international community and global publishers to support the Ukrainian publishing sector's recovery, and to cease all cooperation with Russian entities.