© Brendan Stephens via Unsplash
Two attacks by Russian drones caused a massive fire at the Ranok publishing house warehouse in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Millions of books were destroyed in the blaze.
According to director Viktor Kroehlov, approximately eight million copies were destroyed, including 600,000 textbooks and the entire print run of 28,000 titles.
Ranok is Ukraine’s largest children’s book publisher and supplies about one-third of all schoolbooks. One person was injured in the drone attacks. Kroehlov called the attack deliberate, partly because warehouses belonging to other publishers (Knyholav and a partner of BookChef) had previously been destroyed, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands to nearly a million books.
“This was the second such attack in two weeks,” he added, according to Andrii Boetenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science, in local media. “In a Russian attack in July, more than 410,000 schoolbooks intended for students in the new school year were destroyed. Warehouses and printing plants are being deliberately targeted. In addition to printed materials, they are trying to destroy the Ukrainian language, history, and memory.”
© Brendan Stephens via Unsplash - Illustrative image