Following the attack on its warehouse, the Ranok publishing house is urgently reprinting the destroyed textbooks
The Kharkiv-based publishing house “Ranok” has begun resuming operations following the Russian strike on its warehouse on August 1. The attack destroyed millions of books, a significant portion of which were school textbooks, so the main task now is to reprint them as quickly as possible.
According to the publishing house’s CEO, Viktor Kruglov, the top priority is to resume printing the textbooks as quickly as possible to ensure that schools have the necessary materials before the start of the school year. More than 30 employees were at the warehouse during the shelling, but they all managed to evacuate before a large-scale fire broke out.
This has been a huge shock for the entire team. People flinch at any sound, even the faintest ones. Psychological support is needed.
According to Larisa Zubkova, director of the logistics center, the modern 9,000-square-meter warehouse was completely destroyed, including specialized equipment, computers, and terminals. Were State Emergency Service (SES) firefighters able to enter the building after extinguishing the fire, and is there already an estimate of how long it will take for a full recovery?
As of now, the fire itself has been contained, but it is still burning: the books are being doused with water, there is still fire inside, and the flames are flaring up again. It tends to die down at night because it’s cooler, but as soon as the sun comes up, the flames flare up again.
I really hope that today, on the fourth day, we’ll finally be able to fully extinguish the fire. According to procedure, bomb disposal experts will then have to go inside to check for safety. Then the police will come, and only after that will people be allowed inside.
For now, we can only look from the outside: it’s dangerous to go inside, because the high temperatures have destroyed the concrete supports and caused half the roof to collapse.
What will be your first steps now, and how are your logistics and the publishing house’s day-to-day operations organized during this transitional period?
We’ve already assembled a crisis response team and developed an action plan. We’re currently focusing on three areas.
The first priority is to restructure our entire logistics system to resume shipping the remaining stock from our backup warehouses as quickly as possible. The second priority is to generate as much publicity as possible so that the whole world can see what the Russians are doing. And the third priority is to reprint the destroyed books.
We have preserved all the information, as it is backed up and stored in the cloud. The main challenge is finding the funding, because we need to buy paper and place orders with printing houses. The top priority is to reprint the destroyed textbooks.
Among the lost materials are over a million textbooks ordered by the government for 12,500 schools. Will Ukrainian printing houses have enough capacity to mobilize and provide children with books in time for the start of the school year?
We estimate that approximately 75% of schools will receive their textbooks on time. These are the textbooks that have already been distributed throughout Ukraine to regional warehouses. However, about 20–25% of the textbooks will be delayed until October. We will provide digital copies so that the school year can begin. These are textbooks for the new curriculum.
Other publishers have found themselves in a similar situation. Just two weeks ago, during an attack on the “Konvi Print” printing plant, textbooks were destroyed—including ours. We then started printing them again—and that print run was destroyed as well. So this will be the third time.
Given that the priority right now is to reprint textbooks for schoolchildren, how significant might the delays be for general readers?
Twenty-seven thousand titles were destroyed. So the main problem is both the large number of books—nearly 8 million—and the large number of titles.
A typical printing house can print 200–300 titles per month. Accordingly, we’ll be reaching out to many printing houses to get this work done.
How can the Ukrainian book community support “Ranok” right now?
We’ve posted pre-orders for the books on the websites of the “Ranok” and “Knyholand” publishing houses. We can’t fulfill them right now, but we will definitely fulfill these pre-orders. I hope that in a few months—I can’t give an exact date—we’ll be able to ship them. This is the kind of support anyone can provide. And please spread the word as widely as possible about the Russians’ crime, because this was definitely a targeted attack.
This was reported by Suspilne Culture.
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