A silent embrace and employees’ tears captured the devastation awaiting a visiting Lithuanian official inside Kharkiv’s ruined center of Ukrainian publishing.
Lithuanian Culture Minister Lukas Alsis visited Kharkiv, where he inspected a book warehouse destroyed by Russian forces.
Victor Kruglov, chairman of the supervisory board of RNK‑Ranok, reported on the visit.
Lithuanian Culture Minister Lukas Alsis did not expect to see anything like this. He silently embraced me. The staff were in tears. It is painful to look at the meaning of Ukrainians’ lives destroyed by the Russian invaders.
– Victor Kruglov
He added that the world should learn about what had happened.
On August 1, during a Russian attack, the warehouses of the RNK‑Ranok corporation caught fire in Kharkiv. Books published by Ranok, as well as books from the Knigoland bookstore chain and the publishers Readberry, Zhorzh, Fabula, and others, were destroyed.
Rescuers battled the fire for several days. According to the owner, the warehouse cannot be restored.
Eight million copies of books were destroyed, including 600,000 textbooks that were supposed to be delivered to educational institutions by September 1.
Assessing the Scale of the Losses and the Significance of the Event
This event highlights the importance of protecting cultural heritage and the need to preserve it for future generations.