Ukraine registered 117 new book publishing businesses in 2025—the highest figure in at least five years and 60% above the prewar level of 73 in 2021, according to new research from market analytics platform YC.Market published on 19 February.
Russia has spent three years bombing printing houses, destroying libraries, and confiscating Ukrainian books in occupied territories.
In 2022, the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, new registrations collapsed to just 43. By 2023, they rebounded to 83. In 2024—87. And in 2025, they surged past every previous benchmark. As of mid-February 2026, Kyiv alone hosts 218 active publishing entities, followed by Kharkiv Oblast (43) and Lviv Oblast (38).
The record came during Ukraine’s heaviest year of Russian bombardment. Russia has spent three years bombing printing houses, destroying libraries, and confiscating Ukrainian books in occupied territories.
Russia eradicates Ukrainian literature in occupied territories, replaces it with russian books
What’s driving the surge
Banned Russian books left a vacuum. Ukraine’s parliament passed a law banning book imports from Russia and Belarus in June 2022; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it a year later.
Before Russia’s first invasion in 2014, Russian-published books accounted for roughly 60% of the Ukrainian market. That entire segment—children’s books, detective novels, translations of world classics—needed to be replaced with Ukrainian-language editions.
Education reform requires new textbooks every year. The “New Ukrainian School” reform, launched in 2017 and continuing through wartime, mandates entirely new textbooks as curricula are updated grade by grade.
A $415 million World Bank program is funding textbook purchases for 400,000 students, with new curricula for grades 10–12 being piloted through 2028. The state also launched a voucher program for 18-year-olds: in the first nine months of 2025, over 200,000 participants bought books worth 181.9 million UAH ($4.2 million).
“With all the power cuts, books are even more popular. People read them by flashlight or candlelight.”
Blackouts made screens useless. Russia’s systematic strikes on energy infrastructure have left cities facing long power cuts. Books need only daylight—or a candle. In Lviv, where scheduled blackouts stretched across summer afternoons, this author spent those evenings reading—it was the only entertainment left.
Vivat Publishing House editor-in-chief Artem Litvinets told NPR: “With all the power cuts, books are even more popular. People read them by flashlight or candlelight.”
Bookstore chains opened dozens of new locations in 2023–2024; the Ukrainian Book Institute counted 449 bookstores operating across Ukraine by December 2023, with the largest chain, Knyharnia Ye, adding 22 stores that year alone.
By the first half of 2025, half of the surveyed publishers reported revenue growth exceeding 25%, and Ukrainian publishers signed over 160 foreign licensing deals—more than in all of 2023.
Where the money goes
Revenue is surging across the sector. The top-grossing publisher, Kharkiv-based textbook maker Ranok, grew from 255 million UAH ($5.9 million) in 2022 to 842 million UAH ($19.5 million) by 2025.
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With education reform guaranteeing textbook demand for years, how public money flows through this concentrated market is worth watching.
All ten top publishers have won state procurement contracts—Ranok alone won over 200 worth 309 million UAH ($7.1 million)—and YC.Market flags significant ownership overlap among leading companies. With education reform guaranteeing textbook demand for years, how public money flows through this concentrated market is worth watching.
The cost of the boom
On 23 May 2024, Russian missiles destroyed Factor Druk—a Kharkiv facility that printed a third of all Ukrainian books. Seven workers were killed, many more injured, and over 50,000 books burned. Two months earlier, Russia struck the Hurov&K printing house.
In 2022, it hit Ranok’s logistics center. In June 2025, strikes destroyed the Krokus warehouse in Kharkiv, damaged Kyiv’s Skovoroda Library, and wiped out the Ukrainsky Priorytet publishing house and Book.ua bookstore.
Factor Druk was fully rebuilt by March 2025 and Kharkiv, 25 kilometres from the Russian border, still prints 80% of Ukraine’s books.
Russian forces have damaged 784 libraries across Ukraine, part of what the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in 2024 called a deliberate campaign to erase Ukrainian cultural identity.
Factor Druk was fully rebuilt by March 2025—funded by American philanthropist Howard Buffett’s foundation—and Kharkiv, 20 miles from the Russian border, still prints 80% of Ukraine’s books.
Russia burned 50,000 books in a single strike. The year that followed produced more new publishers than any on record.
