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Russian Ballistic Missile Strike on Kyiv Destroys 250,000 School Textbooks
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Russia destroyed one of Ukraine's largest printing houses in an overnight ballistic missile strike on Kyiv, wiping out nearly 250,000 school textbooks prepared for the coming academic year.
The strike on the Konvi group's facility was reported by the Ukrainian outlet NV on July 20, citing the company's commercial director, Viktoriia Haidai.
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The printing house was struck during Russia’s July 19 ballistic missile attack on Kyiv, which killed one person and injured 16 others in the capital.
Haidai wrote that the ballistic missile left the plant's vast workshops without roofs, with the printing and binding halls hit hardest. The equipment there was destroyed or flooded, while the printing house's offices burned out entirely.
The blast destroyed nearly 250,000 ninth-grade textbooks that were ready for shipment to schools. It also damaged partially finished stock totaling around 350,000 books, including fourth-grade textbooks.
Damaged output belonged to more than a dozen Ukrainian publishers, among them Ranok, Hramota, Litera LTD, Knyholav, Laboratoriya, and Artbooks.
"The enemy's goal is obvious—to insidiously disrupt the educational process in Ukraine and leave schoolchildren without books ahead of September 1," Haidai stated. "They are waging war against the knowledge of our children and Ukrainian culture. But they will not break us."
The Konvi group ranks among Ukraine's largest printing enterprises and is a central supplier of the country's school textbooks. Viktor Kruglov, head of the supervisory board at the Ranok publishing house, wrote that the losses ran far beyond the plant itself.
Counting Knyholav stock held in a separate warehouse, he noted that close to one million Ukrainian books were destroyed in a single night.
"I cannot look at this destruction without tears," Kruglov wrote. "We will restore and print new books."
The publisher Artbooks reported that several forthcoming titles were due to be printed at the facility and warned of possible delays. The Ark.Yui publishing house described blown-out windows and floors covered in broken glass at its editorial offices.
No staff were harmed in the strike, according to Haidai, who pledged that the printing house would be rebuilt. The attack came weeks before Ukraine's school year opens on September 1, when the lost textbooks were due to reach classrooms.
Earlier, the strikes on June 14–15 damaged the UNESCO-listed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and destroyed the Dovzhenko Film Studio's costume archive of roughly 100,000 items, and struck the Kharkiv Art Museum and Dnipro's House of Organ and Chamber Music.
As of February 24, 2026, the invasion had damaged or destroyed 1,685 cultural heritage sites and 2,483 cultural infrastructure facilities. The World Bank has estimated $24 billion in direct and indirect losses to the sector.
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