Incinerated novels and destroyed warehouses: Russia’s war on Ukrainian books

[…]

Malkovych has published many children’s books, but none in such quantity as Harry Potter. His editions hit the shelves faster, and were better translated, than the Russian versions (“We Ukrainianised a lot of children that way,” he said.) He lost 40,000 books in the same Nova Poshta warehouse attack that destroyed Krapky’s stock – about $500,000 (£377,800) of losses. “We were always proud of our delivery service – you could order a book at 4am and it would arrive by midday. Now we face big delays,” he said. He was particularly worried about the next Harry Potter release, on 6 October. There had been a lot of pre-orders and he wanted delivery to be synchronised with the rest of the world, despite the full-scale invasion

https://www.theguardian/ com/world/ng-interactive/2026/oct/04/incinerated-novels-destroyed-warehouses-russia-war-ukrainian-books

Ukranians crying about kids being deprived of a fascist book about a boy with a lightning bolt in his forehead, hmmm

The article mentions the warehouse had like $500,000 worth of books, from a publishing industry that functionally didn’t exist before 2020? No one’s even bought them, a lot of it’s school text books, literal government propaganda produced by a state that has outlawed the russian language.

the harry potter bit was too much.

If there were Ukranians characters in harry potter, what would joanne klann rowling have called them? Slava Ukrani, but Polekiller for short? Oh here comes Polekiller, slovenly, shabbily dressed next to malfoy, but still stunningly beautiful thought harry.

time for me to touch grass, byeeee

  • Feed_el_Castro [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    52·
    21 days ago

    So Russia hit a warehouse (in retaliation to Ukraine doing the same) and it happened to have Ukrainian books (wow, Ukrainian books in Ukraine!) so they’re making a hit piece about the existential danger to Ukrainian language?

    • Johnny_Arson [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      21 days ago

      Anyone ever says some dumb bullshit like that ask them how many native people in the US still speak their indigenous languages.

      Same when people talk about “cultural genocide” in China fuck these people.

      • Feed_el_Castro [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        22·
        21 days ago

        You can find also egregious examples in Europe. 100 years ago there were about a million speakers of Occitan, down to 100k now (so 90% lost in a century), and Occitan still doesn’t enjoy any degree of recognition institutionally, of which the Wikipedia article on Vergonha does a surprisingly good job of portraying.

        Estonia is another example, with a language police (Keeleinspektsioon, or “language inspection”, recently renamed to “language board” or Keeleamet) which goes to public institutions and businesses and fines them if there are workers which they determine have a lower than C1 level of Estonian, and even has the capability of enforcing terminations of employment for said people, normally ethnic Russians descending from soviet migrants who moved to Estonia because, contrary to popular belief, it was coddled and investment was huge in it and it was one of the richest republics in the USSR.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    40·
    21 days ago

    Meanwhile American AI companies buy up, steal the content of, and then destroy books from every country on the planet on an industrial scale in order to control, destroy, or sell back that stolen knowledge. The burning of the library of Alexandria a million times over.

  • Hexamerous [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    14·
    21 days ago

    He was particularly worried about the next Harry Potter release, on 6 October.

    Oh god, oh fuck! That’s not a coincident is it. She’s gonna do some “October 7” shit isn’t she?