Over 50,000 books destroyed and three publishers affected in Russian strike on Kharkiv printing house

More than 50,000 books were destroyed and at least three publishers – Vivat, Family Leisure Club (KSD) and Ranok (Morning) – have been affected by a Russian attack on the Faktor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv on 23 May.

Source: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; Vivat publishing house; KSD and Ranok in comments for Ekonomichna Pravda

Details: During a massive missile strike on Kharkiv on 23 May, the Russians hit the Faktor-Druk printing house based there.

Vivat, a publisher which is part of the Faktor holding company that owns the affected printing house, said on their Telegram channel that some of their books were being printed at the time of the Russian strike.

"Faktor-Druk is a printing house that is part of the Faktor group. The Vivat publishing house and Vivat bookshops are also part of the group. It’s one of the largest full-cycle printing facilities in Europe. It doesn’t just print Vivat books, but books from nearly every Ukrainian publisher as well," Vivat said.

Ranok, which publishes textbooks for Ukrainian schools, among other books, also said it had been affected by the attack.

"Ranok had several tens of thousands of books at Faktor-Druk; we don’t yet know what happened to them. That’s around 15-20% of our publishing house’s total output," Ranok CEO Viktor Kruhlov told Ekonomichna Pravda.

KSD is another publisher affected by the Russian missile strike.

"Faktor-Druk is one of the main printing houses KSD works with. This terrorist attack was a real shock for us. Our entire team expresses their condolences to the families of those killed in the attack, and we are ready to offer them support once we know what is needed," KSD’s PR manager Tetiana Riabchenko told Ekonomichna Pravda.

"As of today, it’s still impossible to estimate the damage and the impact on [our] publishing plans, as rescue work is still underway [at the site of the attack]. As a large publishing house with an office and a warehouse in Kharkiv, we have taken precautions: our print runs are distributed among several printing houses. Eleven titles were being printed at Faktor-Druk. We don’t know their fate," Riabchenko said.

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