Ukraine creates fund for small publishers after destruction of 13 million books

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Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture—together with the KSE Foundation, the Ukrainian Book Institute, and the International Book Arsenal Festival —is developing a grant program to aid Ukrainian publishers affected by the ongoing war.

This effort follows recent Russian strikes that destroyed about 13 million Ukrainian books, which is nearly a third of the total print run Ukrainian publishers produced in 2025.

Leaders concur that the book bombing is part of a targeted strategy on Russia’s part to decimate the country’s culture .

In this kind of warfare, smaller institutions and indie presses are particularly vulnerable. Because unlike the larger houses, they can lack the resources to reprint lost inventory.

Many indies are also too small to quality for state aid under current funding guidelines, which leaves many outfits in a lurch.

With this in mind, the Ministry’s new grant program aims to support small publishers. Which, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Culture, Bohdana Laiuk, are those presses “releasing up to 20 books a year.”

The KSE Foundation will administer the fund, and institutional grants will be distributed after a transparent open call set to close at the end of this year. Laiuk told me by email that the Ministry of Culture hopes to support up to 20 specific projects in the grant’s first round.

For publishers on the hunt for support, the call for applications should be up in November, once the fund is expected to reach its cap goal of $500,000. (But watch this space .)

Meanwhile, the grant itself is still in the fundraising stage. Individual and corporate would-be supporters can find more information—and donate to the program!— here .

Image via KSE Foundation