Flames consumed 15,000 books at Sumy State University overnight after the Russian missile and drone attack on the city.

The 18 August overnight attack targeted multiple university buildings, with the library in the “N” building suffering significant fire damage, according to Suspilne. 

The destroyed books represented the library’s most recent acquisitions, purchased within the last five to six years.

The latest losses add to devastation from previous strikes. In April, shelling of the university’s congress center resulted in the destruction of 45,000 books, library officials reported. 

Now, the total number of volumes lost to Russian strikes at this university is 60,000.

Scientific equipment damaged

University staff also worked to evacuate valuable scientific equipment from the fire-damaged building, which was flooded during firefighting efforts.

Vice-Rector Anatolia Chornous explained what they were trying to save: scanning electron microscopes, microanalyzers, and other equipment purchased through research grants since 2018.

“We had several grants, and with those funds we bought quite expensive equipment,” Chornous said.

The Center for Collective Use of Scientific Equipment represented years of building research capacity for analytical and materials science work, eliminated in a few moments.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused heavy damage to nearly 1,000 libraries and destroyed over 200 million Ukrainian books, according to the date from Ukrainian officials.

In May 2024, a Russian missile hit a printing house in Kharkiv, killing seven workers and burning 50,000 mostly children’s books, making the need for new books even more urgent.

In the Russian-occupied territories, the authorities remove Ukrainian books from local libraries, calling them “extremist” and replacing them with Russian books. 

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