A Russian attack on Kyiv overnight destroyed a printing plant that was in the process of turning out 1.3 million school text books, about 10% of the total required, just before the start of the academic school year which gets underway on Tuesday. File photo by Maxym Marusenko/EPA
Aug. 31 (UPI) — A Russian attack on Kyiv overnight destroyed a printing plant that was in the process of turning out 1.3 million school text books, about 10% of the total required, ahead of the start of the academic school year on Tuesday.
The blast and resulting blaze damaged the Konvi Group faciliity and printing presses beyond repair and reduced a large stockpile of books to ashes while printed material that was not burned was water damaged or otherwise rendered unusable.
It was the second strike on the company’s facilities in six weeks with Konvi Commercial Director Viktoriia Haida telling the BBC that it was part of a concerted Russian effort targeting Ukraine‘s national identity.
“I believe it is deliberate on the part of the Russian Federation. 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,” said Haida.
A ballistic missile strike on another of Konvi’s plants on July 19 destroyed production workshops, printing and binding equipment, office premises and nearly 250,000 school books and and destroyed the materials for print-runs for 350,000 books for more than a dozen Ukrainian educational publishers.
A drone attack on a Nova Poshta fulfilment and sorting center on Friday in Sviatopetrivske outside Kyiv destroyed more than 60,000 books being stored at the facility from Ukrainian publishers and retailers including Vivat, Osnovy, Readeat and Book.ua.
The strike on the privately-held mail and logistics provider was one of more than 30 similar attacks over the past three months that have destroyed at least 13 million books, equivalent to the industry’s entire 2025 output, according to the Ukrainian Publishing Association.
The two largest single attacks were the Aug. 1 destruction of the automated logistics center of the Ukrainian publishing corporation RNK-Ranok in Kharkiv in which about 8 million books were lost, including 600,000 school textbooks for the new school year, and a strike on the central warehouse of the logistics partner of BookChef Publishing House in which about 800,000 books were destroyed on July 2.
In an earlier open letter Ukraine Publishing Association President Artem Bidenko urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to call an urgent meeting of his National Security and Defense Council warning that the survival of the sector was at stake.
He called for “urgent measures’ from the cabinet amid what he said were systematic Russian attacks on printing houses, warehouses and bookstores that had caused losses of at least $27 million, including compensation and the inclusion of goods in circulation in war risk insurance.
