Russia Has Destroyed More Than 12 Million Ukrainian Books

Russian attacks have destroyed more than 12 million Ukrainian books — nearly half of what Ukraine publishes in a year, estimated at 26–30 million copies annually. Ukrainian writer Oleksandr Mykhed lays out the arithmetic in his essay "Writing in Times of War," translated by Yulia Tomchuk and available through the Hay Festival at hayfestival.com/anytime.

Mykhed begins with the texture of daily life under bombardment. On Thursday, August 27, Ukraine recorded 13 air raid alarms lasting a total of 872 minutes. The next day brought 12 alarms lasting 634 minutes, then 10 lasting 644 minutes. "And so it goes every day," he writes. "Russia sends drone after drone, forging an unbroken chain of threats."

The essay's central losses are concrete and counted.

• A Russian missile destroyed 400,000 books belonging to the publisher of a friend's debut fantasy novel — in a single night, losses exceeding a year's worth of sales. The debut is now postponed, likely to next spring.
• Around 300,000 copies from a publisher of translated comics — "simply everything they had managed to produce over several years" — were destroyed.
• Some publishers lost about 80 percent of their entire stock.
• A successful Ukrainian author saw the print runs of all five of her books, printed by the same publisher, destroyed in a single night.
• A Russian drone struck a post office facility, destroying about a third of a contemporary Ukrainian artist's works bound for his first solo exhibition in Paris.

What does the destruction of books do to publishing?

Mykhed argues the damage goes beyond burned inventory. "When survival becomes the main problem, everything goes back to the basics," he writes: "What can be sold. What is easy and straightforward." The predictable result, in his account: fewer debuts by little-known authors, fewer experiments, less translated niche literature.

His friend, the debut novelist, describes the publishers' logic without bitterness. "He says he understands — to survive, publishers will have to print the books they know are guaranteed to sell. It is hard to bet on an unknown debut author." A few days later, the publisher emailed to say the book would probably move to next spring. The friend's response: "He says he has to write the second book and believe that it will reach its readers."

Mykhed also reframes books as livelihoods, not only culture. "If we stop thinking of books as acts of divine inspiration and start thinking of them as products from which an author receives royalties, then in a situation like this, a writer simply finds themselves without a source of income." Royalties lost mean writers must earn elsewhere — instead of working on their next book. "Perhaps not as noticeable as a missing bottle of laundry detergent from the shelves or a desperately needed medicine. But the chain is fragile, and it breaks so easily."

How does a city function under constant alarm?

Mykhed describes Kyiv paralyzed. State institutions, shopping malls and grocery stores close during alarms; no documents can be obtained, no doctor's appointments held at public hospitals. Children rush back to shelters before they reach class. In one attack, a Russian drone struck a university in central Kyiv in daylight; 160 students reached shelter and casualties were avoided.

Russia, he writes, is burning warehouses around Kyiv — food, construction materials, electronics, children's toys, shoes, humanitarian aid. "In a single night the losses exceed a year's worth of sales," he notes of the book trade.

Even cinema registers the war's tempo. A friend saw Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and reported not a review but a count: three air raid alarms during the screening, and after each all-clear the film rewound ten minutes. "For the viewer, The Odyssey between air raid sirens feels like a long journey in itself," Mykhed writes.

He lists the cities living this way: Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Sumy. "At some point, the body grows tired of feeling constantly under threat," he writes, noting that sleep deprivation and exhaustion now outlast the instinct for self-preservation. "Now, being in a state of alert becomes normal, rather than being free from it."

What does literature mean in times of war?

Mykhed closes with his answer to Western colleagues who ask what writing means during war: writers, translators and publishers killed by the Russians; others serving in the military; millions of books burned; dozens of publishing houses destroyed. "Books unwritten. Lives unwritten."

He ends with an image of reconstruction at the smallest scale: "33 letters of the Ukrainian alphabet, which each time I pull from the ashes, shake off the ash and bits of concrete, clean them of glass and missile fragments, and arrange them in a new order." The full consequences of the warehouse strikes, he warns, will only become apparent with time.