Russian attack on printing house in Kharkiv: burnt books to be exhibited in Sweden

The website of the Ukrainian Institute in Sweden reported the information.

The Ukrainian Institute in Sweden received books from Ukraine that were damaged during a missile attack on the Factor Printing House in Kharkiv on May 23, 2024. The missile hit the building with 50 employees, seven of whom were killed. More than 50,000 books burned in the fire.

The Vivat and Ranok publishing houses agreed to provide some of the damaged books to the Ukrainian Institute in Sweden. They will now become museum exhibits in Stockholm. The Ukrainian Institute in Sweden received burnt copies of fiction, children's and educational literature.

“Russia is killing Ukrainian writers. Dozens of them have already died because of the war. The attacker is denying Ukraine its right to have its own language and literature. This is not the first time that Ukrainian printing houses have been attacked. The world must know and see these crimes. We asked the publishers in Kharkiv to give us the burned books to display them here in Sweden as material evidence of a war crime against the future of Ukraine", said Natalya Pasichnyk, Director of the Ukrainian Institute in Sweden.

Thus, the Ranok publishing house handed over six burnt copies of German textbooks for 7th grade students, as well as another book from the previous edition that survived the attack on the warehouse in 2022. The textbook was pierced by a missile fragment. The fragment itself will also become an exhibit.

Vivat has provided burnt books such as The Underground State by Andriy Kokotyukha, a collection of fantastic short stories by Ukrainian science fiction writers called Motanka, a children's book called The Cutest Baby Animals, a detective story called Guest Against the Night by American writer Heather Goodenkauf, and two copies of You can't retreat from a fight, written by Pavlo Belyansky, a Ukrainian writer and screenwriter, co-founder of the publishing house "DIPA", a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

• As a result of a Russian missile strike on Kharkiv, one of the largest printing houses in Europe, Factor-Druk, where books from almost all Ukrainian publishers are printed, was destroyed.