A wave of coordinated Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine has targeted critical publishing infrastructure and iconic cultural heritage sites, leaving a trail of destruction that Ukrainian officials describe as a deliberate campaign to erase national identity.
On the outskirts of Kyiv, the charred, twisted wreckage of a major printing press offers a stark example of the damage. The facility was weeks away from delivering 1.3 million textbooks – 10% of Ukraine’s total annual schoolbook supply – when a Russian missile struck overnight amid a production ramp-up for the new academic year. Among the ash and rubble, a single scorched page from an English textbook survives as a haunting symbol: it reads, “My name is William, I’m from the UK. My grandmother lives in Nottingham. It’s a beautiful city.”
No materials have been salvaged from the site. Pages that escaped the fire were left waterlogged by firefighting efforts or damaged by exposure after the roof collapsed. Viktoria Haidai, commercial director of Ukrainian publisher Konvi, called the attacks a calculated strategy against Ukrainian statehood. “Over the past two months, some of the largest publishing houses have lost their logistics warehouses, where very large quantities of books were stored,” she explained. “The Russians are also destroying printing houses in an attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation. But frankly they will not succeed.”
Across the country, the scope of destruction to the publishing sector is staggering. Recent attacks have hit more than 35 publishing facilities, destroying 12 million finished books – accounting for one-third of all books printed in Ukraine so far this year, according to local media reports. The damage is not limited to new publications: Kyiv’s historic Pochaina second-hand book market, a beloved cultural gathering spot, was also struck, wiping out hundreds of independent vendor stalls and thousands of rare, out-of-print volumes.
Even before the embers cooled at the market, 28-year-old book blogger Liliya Velyka was sifting through the rubble, searching for anything she could rescue. Clutching a waterlogged science fiction novel, she summed up the grief of many Ukrainians: “Books are saving us and losing this is like losing our hearts.”
This campaign against cultural infrastructure extends far beyond the publishing sector. Museums, art galleries, film studios, public libraries, and opera houses across Ukraine have sustained damage in the attacks. One of the highest-profile targets is Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a sprawling medieval monastery complex and one of Ukraine’s most significant cultural landmarks, which was hit in a June drone attack. While religious artifacts were moved to safety ahead of the strike, a large portion of the Dormition Cathedral’s roof caught fire, damaging the structure’s iconic golden domes. Repair estimates put the cost at $11.2 million, with work expected to take two years to complete.
The monastery complex, which also houses Ukraine’s Museum of Books and Printing, was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1990, and marked as a World Heritage Site in Danger in September 2023. During recent celebrations marking the 975th anniversary of the monastery’s founding, UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany expressed profound sorrow over the damage and condemned the attacks. “UNESCO firmly condemns all attacks against cultural property protected under international law,” he told assembled dignitaries, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine’s Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna drew a clear connection between military attacks on Ukraine and the deliberate targeting of cultural sites. “This is an existential war, so Russia wants to destroy us as a nation, to erase us as a nation, like Ukrainians do not exist and have never existed,” she said during a tour of the damaged cathedral with El-Enany. “That’s why Russia targets our cultural heritage, the symbols of our presence here for a long time. They understand that it’s very important for us because we protect our identity, we protect our culture, and Russia wants to ruin everything that it cannot appropriate.”
As of the latest reports, Berezhna confirmed that Russian forces have damaged more than 1,900 individual Ukrainian heritage sites and over 2,000 cultural institutions. To mitigate ongoing losses, the Ukrainian government has accelerated digitization efforts to preserve art, literature, and educational content, ensuring children can still access learning materials even as physical book stockpiles are destroyed. Industry leaders warn that the entire Ukrainian publishing sector is at risk of collapse without urgent international support.
For Haidai, the survival of publishing is non-negotiable for preserving Ukrainian identity. “The word is everything,” she said at the bombed-out Kyiv printing plant. “It is our development, our culture, and our historical heritage that is passed down from generation to generation.”
The targeting of cultural sites aligns with long-standing Russian rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of an independent Ukrainian state and culture. In a 2021 essay, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people” and rejected the idea of a distinct Ukrainian national identity.
In response to requests for comment from the BBC, the Russian Embassy in the UK shifted blame to the Ukrainian government, claiming that Ukraine had already damaged its own cultural heritage by dismantling Soviet-era monuments and renaming streets. The embassy also repeated a common Russian claim that cultural sites have been used to conceal military equipment. The Kremlin has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure throughout five years of full-scale invasion, despite widespread documentation of missile and drone strikes on residential neighborhoods, public services, and cultural sites across Ukraine.