Russia has continued its air strikes on Ukraine on Sunday, killing a 19-year-old employee of a civilian enterprise in Kramatorsk with a Geran-2 drone and injuring seven others. A postal facility in the city was also struck later in the day.
In Sumy, a Russian drone struck a civilian car, killing a 59-year-old man and injuring his 50-year-old wife. Overall, two people were killed and another two civilians were injured in Russian attacks across Sumy Oblast over the previous 24 hours.
Overnight into Sunday, Russia also bombed the iconic Pochaina Book Market in Kyiv (feature image), locally known as Petrivka. The missile strike set the market on fire, destroying rows of stalls, books and vendors’ property while also damaging the nearby Pochaina metro station and the offices of Ukrainian publishing house Nash Format. Three people were injured during the wider attack on Kyiv.
The Pochaina market, founded in 1997, was once one of Ukraine’s largest book markets and hosted books from more than 120 publishers.
Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine’s book industry along with other cultural institutions throughout its war. On August 1, a Russian drone destroyed around eight million books at the warehouse of major Ukrainian children’s publisher Ranok in Kharkiv. More than ten million books have been destroyed in attacks on Ukrainian publishing warehouses in recent months.
The destruction of books and publishing infrastructure is part of Russia’s wider assault on Ukrainian culture, language and national identity and hence constitutes part of its genocidal campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly questioned Ukraine’s separate national identity and has claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
Newsroom
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