UKRAINE, KHARKIV, Aug. 20 — It will take the Ranok publishing house three to five years to fully recover after the Russian attack on its storage building in Kharkiv on Aug. 1, said Viktor Kruhlov, head of the Ranok publishing house.

That day, a Russian attack destroyed millions of books, including school textbooks that were being prepared for delivery to schools before the start of the school year in September.

According to Kruhlov, all the files and book layouts have been saved in cloud storage, so they can be recovered.

He said that the production crisis management team began discussions of “issues related to funding, paper imports, and legal matters” the very next day, while firefighters were still putting out the fire, which had been burning for seven days.

“The government says military risks do not constitute force majeure,” Kruhlov said.

The publishing house is forced to revise its budget, cut salaries, and seek loans from banks to resolve its financial issues.

Kruhlov said that the crisis response team is working to restore logistics to protect the storage and delivery of books in the future.

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