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.…