Ukraine withdraws 19 mln Russian, Soviet-era books from libraries

7/2/2023 12:07

        Ukraine had withdrawn from its libraries about 19 million copies of books by last November that came either from the Soviet era or were in Russian, a senior
        lawmaker said on Monday.
        
        Yevheniya Kravchuk, deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on humanitarian and information policy, said that of the 19 million books, 11 million were in Russian.
        
        "Some Ukrainian-language books from the Soviet era are also written off," Kravchuk said according to a statement published on the website of the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament.
        
        "There are also recommendations to write off and remove books whose authors supported armed aggression against Ukraine."
        
        It was not immediately clear what happened to the withdrawn books.
        
        After Russia moved to annex Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Kyiv increasingly restricted the use of Russian books. The process of the so-called "de-russification" sped up when Russia invaded the country nearly a year ago.