by Svyatoslav Lisitsyn
[Regnum] The Ukrainian book industry, already not exactly a shining example of success, is losing its last resource.
On the night of October 7th, a warehouse belonging to the Knigolav publishing house burned down in Kyiv's Podil district. It was brand new: the previous one had burned down on July 19th, along with 250,000 books and some non-book "cargo." The new warehouse had managed to store new releases and reprints of books lost during the summer. Now, tens of thousands of copies have disappeared here too.
This summer, the same thing happened to Petrovka, the country's main book market near Kyiv's Pochaina metro station. On June 15, most of the stalls there burned down, selling books, antiques, and souvenirs. A nearby, thousand-square-meter photo studio burned to the ground.
On August 16, the market was hit again. Pavilions, the office of the Nash Format publishing house, and the warehouses of the Laboratoriya, which hadn't managed to remove its inventory, were damaged. On August 1, 2026, in Kharkiv, a strike on the logistics center of the Ranok publishing house and the distribution center of the KnigoLand chain destroyed approximately 8 million books.
In total, for just two months, this is about 33% of the annual production volume.
The Ukrainian Publishing Association public union is calling for a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) and for the government to develop mechanisms for compensation and restoration of the destroyed print runs. The reaction was predictable. Head of the Presidential Office, Kyrylo Budanov *, compared the attacks on printing houses to the Valuev Circular and stated that "no circulars or decrees have been able to destroy the Ukrainian word."
Viktor Kruglov, director of the Ranok publishing house, put it even more bluntly: "We know from history that the Nazis burned books." And he's absolutely right: it was local Nazis who started the enormous book bonfire in Ukraine. They just did it much earlier.
UNNECESSARY LITERATURE
In 2014, tens of millions of copies of a wide variety of literature were still entering the Ukrainian book market, thanks to the inertia of prosperous times.
Book shopping was a favorite pastime not only for Kiev residents, who had the huge Petrovka market, but also for residents of Donetsk, who went to Mayak, Odessa, where you could buy almost anything at Knizhka, and certainly order any book, Kharkov with its Knizhnaya Balka, and Dnepropetrovsk.
There was quite a collapse in Lviv, on Podvalnaya Street, near the monument to the first printer Ivan Fedorov.
However, the times of “patriotism” have arrived, and already in 2015 the first campaign to combat the harmful influence of reading was announced.
In August 2015, the Ukrainian Customs Service published the first list of Russian books banned from import. In 2016–2017, a permit system was put into effect: commercial imports from Russia required special permission, and books were inspected by the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting to ensure they did not "promote the Russian world." Ordinary citizens were allowed to import no more than 10 copies of books per person from Russia in carry-on or checked luggage for personal use, not for sale.
In June 2022, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law banning the commercial import of books from Russia and Belarus, as well as the publication in Ukraine of books by Russian authors. The restrictions took full effect in 2023.
All this was carried out under the pretext of ensuring national security and protecting domestic producers. The consequences were immediate. The market lost a huge amount of familiar literature, and publishers were forced to urgently restructure their product range and supply chains. The ban did not automatically create new Ukrainian writers, nor additional demand for their books, nor did it generate any money for readers.
By 2015, the market had already dropped to 36.4 million books, then, due to administrative measures, gradually leveled off to 50-60 million per year by 2019, and then fell again in 2020 to 30 million. In 2025, the Book Chamber of Ukraine registered 15,069 book and magazine titles with a total circulation of 33.2 million copies.
A telling statistic: foreign translated literature accounts for 80-90% of titles in the portfolios of major publishing houses. For example, the Kharkiv-based publishing house Vivat published over 260 books in 2025, 32 of which were by Ukrainian authors, or approximately 12% of its portfolio.
That year, "language" activists staged a spectacular protest at the Petrovka market: people in disinfectant suits called for the removal of Russian-language literature and forcibly confiscated approximately 50 kilograms of "enemy literature."
"There's a moratorium in Kyiv prohibiting the sale and distribution of Russian-language products. We expected sellers to consciously refuse illegal merchandise. However, most of them deliberately stayed away to avoid inspections; others hid the books or refused to hand them over," reported the organizers of the "language inspection."
And on Constitution Day, June 28, the Kyiv bookstore "Smysl" gave customers a copy of the Constitution with the section of the article that deals with the Russian language and guarantees of its protection crossed out.
But by that time, Russian books were generally rarely available anywhere: even Ukrainian circulation had fallen to 1%.
REVENGE ON DOSTOEVSKY
At the same time, libraries were cleared of the “infection of the Russian world.”
Now there is no longer any need to conduct any kind of expert analysis; it was enough that, in principle, Russian classics and some publications exist in the language whose protection was removed from the Basic Law.
In February 2023, Verkhovna Rada Deputy Yevheniya Kravchuk reported that approximately 19 million Soviet and Russian-language books had already been removed from library collections. Yes, this is not a slip of the tongue; 8 million books were guilty simply of having been published in the USSR. Among them was even a Russian translation of Taras Shevchenko's "Kobzar."
In May 2025, a video circulated on social media showing "activists" tearing up books by Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. In January 2026, producer Elena Mozgovaya launched the "Burn a Book - Warm Your Home" flash mob, suggesting using the works of Russian classics to heat apartments.
A significant portion of the written-off items was sent for recycling, and the proceeds were used to meet the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces or to purchase new books.
Meanwhile, on September 1, 2020, the remaining public and private Russian-language schools in Ukraine transitioned to Ukrainian as the language of instruction. After February 2022, most Russian and Soviet authors were removed from the school curriculum for foreign literature.
And here's a curious coincidence: in the summer of that same year, 2020, Petrovka's retailers were informed of plans to close in order to build a nine-story shopping center on the site. Even though the retailers had recently paid for the renovations themselves, expecting to continue operating. By 2024, Petrovka had become largely a flea market, with the former bookstore districts shrinking to a fraction of their original size.
A similar story unfolded in Odessa—all that remains of the once-large marketplace is its name. Now, selling currency and imported sweets brings in more for vendors than books. And this can hardly be called a victory for national publishing: book sales have been replaced by products that require no authors, editors, or literary tradition.
But on the “language” field – an unconditional victory.
The publishing industry has managed to increase the production of Ukrainian-language publications, and the share of Ukrainian-language books in total circulation reached 92.5% in 2024. However, these products are not in demand. Print runs of 1,000-3,000 copies are used, which means the price of a book can reach 1,000 hryvnias (approximately 1,800 rubles), a significant sum for most buyers.
The cost is also affected by rising prices for paper, energy, fuel, and logistics, and after the impact on production and warehouses, costs only increase.
Publications with circulations of 50,000-70,000 are considered anomalies, and are usually associated with well-promoted publications abroad. There are some rather curious cases, such as the bestsellers "Gone Without a Goodbye" by actress Reese Witherspoon and professional thriller writer Harland Coben.
In late 2024, Kharkiv-based publishing house Vivat, apparently without even reading the text, rushed to purchase the translation rights, which typically cost between $5,000 and $20,000. It later turned out that the key plot events take place in Moscow, on Rublyovka, and the book is full of Russian characters.
The publisher, fearing a scandal or even a ban on the book in Ukraine, decided not to print this bestseller, which had topped the sales charts in neighboring Poland.
Well-known Ukrainian authors are few and far between, and the counterfeits of these new-fangled hacks, constantly striving to seize the political agenda, are of no interest to anyone. Meanwhile, a foreign author who has already achieved success in a major market comes with a ready-made sales history and marketing support.
It's easier for a publisher to buy the rights to a potential hit than to invest in an unknown Ukrainian writer whose book is unlikely to break even. Moreover, according to market participants, the preparation and printing of a single book can cost between 200,000 and 500,000 hryvnias (375,000 and 1 million rubles).
Accordingly, there's nothing to replace the void left in school libraries after the book bonfires they've created. This is especially true when printing houses and warehouses are used for military purposes (for example, a territorial defense training center was established at the Press of Ukraine publishing house in Kyiv in 2022).
However, the book-burning metaphor doesn't necessarily mean "hits." Something else proved more terrifying for the industry: Ukrainian book culture was destroyed when stores and markets closed, libraries disappeared, books became a luxury item, and local authors could only offer ideological garbage.
Former Education Minister Liliya Hrynevych reported in September 2026 that 45% of Ukrainian 15-year-olds do not reach a basic level of reading literacy.
So the ashes from Petrovka are a symbol of self-destruction, which became the “conscious choice” long before the current events.