Viktoria Haidai surveys the mangled remains of the printing press, which should have been busy churning out textbooks ready for the new school year.
The plant, on the edge of Kyiv, was hit during the night by a Russian missile, just as production was ramping up to deliver 1.3 million books – 10% of Ukraine’s schoolbooks.
In the ashes there is a charred page from an English language textbook: “My name is William, I’m from the UK. My grandmother lives in Nottingham. It’s a beautiful city.”
Russia has hit printing presses and publishing houses across Ukraine in a series of recent attacks, destroying 12 million books and damaging other icons of Ukrainian history and culture. Local media report that Russia has destroyed one third of all the books printed in Ukraine this year.
Nothing is salvageable at this Kyiv printing press. Even the pages that survived the flames have succumbed to water damage, from firefighting or exposure to the elements from the collapsed roof.
“I believe it is deliberate on the part of the Russian Federation,” says Haidai, commercial director of the Konvi publishing firm. “Over the past two months, some of the largest publishing houses have lost their logistics warehouses, where very large quantities of books were stored.
“The Russians are also destroying printing houses in an attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation. But frankly they will not succeed.”
More than 35 publishing facilities have been hit over recent weeks.
Credit: bbc.com
