Russia Removes 18,000 Ukrainian Books from Occupied Areas

The Russian State Library in Moscow has so far removed 18,000 books it describes as “Russophobic” from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine and placed them in a special repository.

Vadim Duda, the library’s director, said the books had been taken from libraries in areas captured by Russia in the eastern Donbas region and other parts of Ukraine.

Duda wrote on Telegram that the books contained “overtly nationalist and Russophobic ideas that grossly distort our shared history”. He said they were being stored for “scholarly and research purposes”, not destroyed.

“This is not an act of destruction, but an act of preservation [...] for future researchers and historians, enabling them to study not only the facts but also the ways in which dangerous ideological narratives were created and disseminated”, he said.

Duda said the process involved dealing with a “difficult heritage” so that it did not “poison the minds of our citizens today”. The aim, he added, was to ensure that such history did not repeat itself in the future.

The special repository was created in 2024 on orders from the Russian culture ministry. Duda had already revealed its existence last November, when he said it held up to 12,000 books.

There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv. Ukraine has long accused Moscow of trying to eradicate Ukrainian culture and identity and of indoctrinating people, including children, as part of a Russification strategy in areas it has captured.

The Russian State Library, near the Kremlin, was previously called the Lenin Library and is one of the largest in the world.

(Reuters, Max)