Olena Ninadovska was inside Ukraine’s biggest printing house when the Russian missile hit. She was working in the binding department. It was 10.20am. Two colleagues – Tetaina Khrapina and Olha Kurasova – stood next to her. The women were operating a row of book-sewing machines. Another employee, Sveta Arestova, had just stepped away to take a telephone call.
The S-300 missile came through the roof. There was no warning. It instantly killed Ninadovksa and the others at her workstation. Arestova was injured but survived. The blast flipped over a 10-tonne book-finishing machine, killing Svitlana Ryzhenko, who was sitting at the end of the assembly line. Two more workers died at an adjacent table. Another, Roman Stroyhi, was killed by shards from a guillotine machine.
Seven people died in the attack on 23 May at the Factor Druk printing house in Kharkiv. Twenty-one were injured. Nine remain in hospital. Two are in intensive care. The firm’s general director, Tetiana Hryniuk, said the strike happened on a sunny Thursday on one of the biggest printing complexes in Europe. Kharkiv, the second city after Kyiv, is Ukraine’s publishing hub.
At the time Hryniuk was in a neighbouring building. “I saw smoke and fire. Those near the epicentre stood no chance,” she said. “My memories are fragmentary. Everybody was in shock. I remember bandaging somebody with a T-shirt.” Hryniuk said she identified Stroyhi and Ryzhenko when their bodies were pulled from the wreckage. But five people, including Ninadovska, were so badly burned they were unrecognisable.
“You couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. We needed DNA tests,” she said. Their remains were released last week. What did she say to her dead colleagues’ relatives? “We hugged and cried together,” she replied. Posting on Facebook, Anna Gyn paid tribute to Ninadovska, her murdered friend. “I always adored the smell of books. Now, probably, they will always remind me of ashes and blood,” Gyn wrote.
Hryniuk said she did not know if the Russian military had deliberately targeted her workplace or had attempted to hit a train repair workshop next door. Three more S-300 missiles fell at the same time. One crashed on to an old railway line; another landed next to a perimeter wall. Whatever Moscow’s intentions, the result, Hryniuk said, was the same: “They destroyed Ukrainian history and culture.”
In occupied areas, the Kremlin has forbidden the Ukrainian language, removed books from schools and imposed a patriotic pro-Russian curriculum. Statues of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko have been torn down. Vladimir Putin insists Ukraine does not exist. Its land, he says, is a part of “historical Russia”.
The strike on the factory wiped out 50,000 books. Among them were works of children’s literature and Ukrainian school textbooks – 40% of them were printed by Factor Druk – due to be sent to classrooms for the new September academic year. Also destroyed were young adult novels and bestsellers. They included a Ukrainian translation of The Marriage Portrait, a historical novel about an Italian duchess by Maggie O’Farrell.
“For me it’s so symbolic. They burned books, like the Nazis did 80 years ago. We have so many historical examples of Russia trying to kill off Ukrainian culture,” said Oleksiy Sobol, the head of the pre-press department. The Russian empire banned Ukrainian-language texts from the 17th century onwards, with follow-up edicts. Under Stalin, in the 1930s, Ukrainian poets and writers were shot – a generation known as the “executed renaissance”.
Since 2022, Russia has erased 172 libraries and nearly 2m books, according to the Ukrainian Book Institute. Last week workers cleared rubble from Factor Druk’s shattered 4,000 sq metre complex. Rain fell. Charred books were piled in sodden yellow heaps. There was debris everywhere: twisted sheet metal from the roof, tossed-around ventilation tubes, and charred printing presses. Blood was visible on plastic door curtains.
Also lost was the entire first print run of Words and Bullets, a collection of interviews about the war with Ukrainian writers including Victoria Amelina. It was due to be published this week. Amelina, a novelist and poet, was killed in June 2023 by a Russian missile strike on the eastern city of Kramatorsk. She was sitting in a pizza restaurant. A war crimes researcher, Amelina frequently referenced the executed renaissance in her work.
“The cycle of horror continues,” said Emma Shercliff, Amelina’s literary agent in London. “This is yet more evidence that another generation of writers and cultural producers are being systematically targeted and eliminated.” Yuliya Orlova, the chief executive of Vivat, one of Ukraine’s leading publishers, said Moscow wanted to “erase who we are”. Vivat’s titles were printed at Factor Druk. Work would continue with production moved to other printers, she said.
Emily Finer, who heads a research team working on Ukrainian children’s literature at the University of St Andrews, called the attack a tragedy. “The priority given to publishing trauma-informed children’s books in wartime Ukraine is unprecedented,” she said. “Over 120 picture books in Ukrainian have been printed since 2022 to help children cope with their wartime experiences now and in the future.”
The strike took place a week before the Arsenal book festival, Kyiv’s biggest literary event. Many of the destroyed books were due to be sold there. This year thousands queued to get in. Burnt copies of Factor Druk titles were exhibited under the slogan: “Books destroyed by Russia. Support bookish Kharkiv – buy books!” The Vivat stall was packed. Sales were brisk. Customers expressed support for an industry under fire.
“The message to Russia is: ‘Fuck off. We will buy more books now,’” said Mykyta Lazarenko, a creative director. He said the mood among Ukrainians was one of angry defiance, similar to that shown by New Yorkers after 9/11. Another customer, Ihor Vynokurov, held up a bag of nonfiction titles. “We want to show the world our culture is real and important. Thirty years ago we had mostly Russian-language books. Now we read Ukrainian ones,” he said.
A day after the strike, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy toured the Factor Druk site. He said it demonstrated that Russia was “at war with humanity and all aspects of normal life”. The Howard G Buffett Foundation, meanwhile, last week pledged €5.1m (£4.3m) to restore the printing house. “They can destroy books but not Ukrainian resilience and commitment,” said Buffett, the son of the billionaire US investor Warren Buffett.
Hryniuk was confident the work could be completed in six months. For now, though, Kharkiv has lost a significant part of its printing resources, which will make it difficult to print textbooks and other books. Three years ago, Factor Druk produced more than a million books a year. In February 2022, when Russian soldiers tried unsuccessfully to seize the city, it closed for four months. Last year it made 420,000 titles. Now it prints none.
Hryniuk said she was nevertheless optimistic about the future. “We have one,” she said. She dismissed Russian claims that Factor Druk had produced drones. “We’ve had hundreds of journalists here. They’ve even checked out the toilet. It’s laughable.” She added: “History shows that every 100 years someone tries to extinguish Ukraine. Despite this we carry on living. We might consider this an ordinary stage of development.”
