News Desk
ISLAMABAD/KYIV: Ukraine withdrew around 19 million copies of books from its libraries by last November that either dated back to the Soviet era or were in the Russian language, a senior lawmaker said on Monday.
Yevheniya Kravchuk, deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on humanitarian and information policy said that 11 million of the total 19 million books removed were in the Russian language.
Kravchuk said in a statement published on the website of the country’s parliament Verkhovna Rada that some Ukrainian-language books from the SovieSoviet era were also written off.
She said there were also recommendations to write off and remove books whose authors supported military aggression against Ukraine.
It was not clear yet what happened to the withdrawn books.
Kravchuk said the ratio of books in Russian and Ukrainian languages in the country’s libraries was “just very regretful.”
She said around 44 percent of books in Ukraine’s libraries were in Russian, with the remaining in Ukrainian or other European languages.
“So now we are discussing the fact that it is necessary to renew funds and buy books in the Ukrainian language as early as possible,” she added.
Kyiv has ramped up restrictions on Russian books since 2014
After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Kyiv increased restrictions on the use of Russian books. The so-called “de-russification” became more rapid when Russia invaded the country nearly a year ago.
In mid-2022, Ukraine imposed restrictions on the distribution of Russian books, further severing cultural ties between the two neighbours and reversing policies that Kyiv says have suppressed Ukrainian identity for centuries.
Ukrainian is the only official language of the country. According to the findings of a 2019 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, about half of the country’s population spokmainly spoke only in Ukrainian and, some 30 percent spoke mostly or only Russian.
