in Kharkiv, the world of culture in mourning after the bombing of a printing house

In Kharkiv, bookstores and publishing houses are trying to continue to keep Ukrainian literature alive, despite the bombings.

Emotions are still running high in Ukraine after the bombing of a printing press in the city of Kharkiv. Thursday, May 23, three Russian missiles destroyed one of the country’s largest printing complexes, killing seven and injuring a dozen. This is where the books of the Vivat publishing house, which has been promoting Ukrainian language and culture for more than ten years, were printed.

Inside the bookstore, in the basement, we are struck by a strange impression of normality in a city at war: the smell of the books, their bright colors, on the shelves… Founded in 2013, the bookstore Edition has only published books in Ukrainian since the start of the war in Donbass ten years ago. “The most horrible thing about this war is that it is killing writers, journalists, who are on the front”laments Alena Ribka, responsible for Ukrainian literature at Vivat. “It kills the most creative people, who are so important to us,” she continues.

Since the start of the full-scale war, they have destroyed 1,600 cultural centers, including 600 libraries. And all this, in just two years.

Alena Ribka, head of Ukrainian literature at Vivat

at franceinfo

One afternoon, the author Vitali Zapeka came to talk about his books in front of around twenty people. Vitali Zapeka is a soldier. He has been fighting in Lugansk since 2014 and has just been wounded in the front by a sniper who aimed at him in the head. The bullet finally passed through the shoulder. At first, he says, in the trenches, he wrote in Russian, but he destroyed his manuscripts to start again, in Ukrainian. “The more the occupiers kill us, the less we can say that we are like brothers, asserts the writer, There is a phrase that does a lot of harm, and we should punish those who use it, and that is to say that we are one people.”

Among the twenty people who came to listen to the author, Kataryna comes from Novopskov in occupied territory, near Donestk. She lived for a year under Russian occupation, and until now, was unable to talk about what she went through when leaving the territory. “It’s as if we were paralyzed, she says, We passed through a corridor, the corridor of hell, two kilometers on foot.” She explains that she couldn’t speak for a month. “I was afraid of people.” A few hugs with the author on the way out, everyone feels a little less alone in the face of the horrors of this war.