Russia is destroying Ukrainian books en masse: statement by PEN Ukraine

Russia attacks Ukraine every day, killing people and destroying civilian infrastructure. It seeks to turn Ukraine into a wasteland.

The Russian army also seeks to destroy Ukrainian culture. That is why its targets are not only our homes, businesses, power plants, shopping centres, and warehouses. Ukrainian books are also its targets.

On the night of 28 August, Ukrainian publishing houses once again reported that their warehouses had been burned down, along with tens of thousands of books.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture, over the summer of 2026 alone, Russia has already destroyed more than 10 million Ukrainian books. This amounts to one-third of Ukraine’s annual book production. These include works by Ukrainian authors as well as books translated into Ukrainian from dozens of foreign languages.

Why does the Russian army destroy Ukrainian books? Because it knows that reading is the foundation of culture and meaning. Books shape our values, our ways of thinking, our cultural memory, our identity, and our sense of community. They are also a foundation of national education — and the new school year in Ukraine begins in just a few days.

Russia is waging war not only against Ukrainians. It is waging war against the very possibility of being Ukrainian. It seeks to destroy Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian self-awareness.

This has happened before, many times. For centuries, the empire killed Ukrainian writers, destroyed Ukrainian books, and sought to deny us the right to speak our own language, read our own literature, and translate works from other literatures into our own language. Russia has done — and continues to do — the same to dozens of other cultures it has subjugated.

We call on the Ukrainian state to support the publishing industry.

We call on Ukrainian citizens to buy Ukrainian books more actively.

We call on the international community to provide Ukraine with modern defensive weapons, particularly those urgently needed to protect Ukrainian skies. We also call for joint efforts to hold representatives of the Russian Federation criminally accountable for committing international crimes.

We call for more consistent engagement of international partners in providing financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, including support for Ukrainian publishers and booksellers.

We ask the international community to urgently help Ukraine in its struggle for survival.

Ukraine’s struggle today is not only a struggle for independence. It is also a struggle for our culture.

It is a struggle for culture itself.