The United States, through USAID, will finance the printing of over 3 million textbooks for primary school students in Ukraine, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced.
These textbooks, produced in Ukraine, will be distributed to more than 12,000 schools across the country. Last year, Ukraine received its first batch of free textbooks for the New Ukrainian School curriculum from the EU.
This USAID initiative supports Ukraine's publishing industry, following the destruction of the Faktor Druk printing house in Kharkiv by Russian forces.
Faktor-Druk produces books for 30 Ukrainian publishing houses and accounts for a third of books in Ukraine, the company’s CEO Tatyana Grinyuk told the Kyiv Independent.
Operating since 1996, the facility employs over 400 people and churned out 450 million books, newspapers, and magazines every year before the full-scale invasion. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, 20% of the printing house's output was foreign orders for around 200 publishing houses.
Sullivan emphasized that Russia's attacks on Ukrainian printing houses are an attempt to undermine the education system.
The country’s literary mecca, Kharkiv, prints 80% of all books published in Ukraine. In recent weeks the city has come under constant attack as Russia opened a new offensive just dozens of kilometers north of the city on May 10.
Kateryna Hodunova
