In Ukrainian libraries caught under Russian occupation or constant shelling, staff tried to save collections much as people save relatives and family heirlooms. Some removed books immediately after strikes, others hid rare editions at home, and still others had to start over for a second time after losing entire holdings.
Valentyna Hantseva, head of the library in the village of Soldatske in Sumy region, recalls how on the morning after an aerial bomb strike hit the village center on March 10, 2022, she and her husband drove to the damaged building. Under shelling, they carried out books, computers, and even albums of children’s drawings, packing everything into construction bags and boxes. Hantseva said the library held titles that could have drawn special attention from Russian forces: works by Serhii Plokhy, Robert Conquest, Timothy Snyder, Dmytro Dontsov, and books on the history of Ukraine’s independence. The library was later restored and now operates as a cultural and educational center for the border village.
Yuliya Vasylenko, director of the Donetsk Regional Children’s Library, said that after 2014 the region’s libraries in Donetsk were effectively left in occupied territory together with their collections and records. Her institution was later relocated to Mariupol, where the city gave the displaced library its own books and equipment. But in the spring of 2022, the Mariupol library burned during the fighting: according to Vasylenko, Russian armored fire struck the building. She also spoke of broader losses to the city’s cultural environment: local historians, writers, and photographers were killed, while much of the literature on the region’s history was destroyed or lost. After evacuating in late April 2022, the library resumed work near Kyiv, in Bila Tserkva.
In Kherson, librarian Halyna Aksyutina, who worked for many years with the holdings of the Shovkunenko Art Museum, managed to preserve some rare editions, including an old copy of Kobzar. She said the collection had been built over decades and included pre-revolutionary books, art-history volumes, and valuable maps. Aksyutina herself was later seriously wounded, but survived because a minibus driver saw her and got her to a hospital.
The looting of the Kherson Regional Scientific Library named after Honchar was described by its director, Nadiya Korotun. She said that in the first days of the occupation, staff tried to hide the most valuable items, while some laptops were taken home for safekeeping. On May 7, 2022, armed Russian troops forced employees out of the building, and when librarians later returned they found opened rooms, scattered papers, and signs of pillaging. On June 21, Korotun said, staff were locked in for several hours while trucks loaded items from the library. Among the stolen materials were pre-revolutionary editions of Russian classics and local-history literature. At the same time, staff managed to save a nearly 300-year-old world atlas and a rare edition of The Master and Margarita.
One of the story’s protagonists says there is also a bitter reason for hope in all this: at least the stolen books were not destroyed, and perhaps one day they can be returned.
Today, the libraries that survived continue to function in wartime: they accept donations, lend books, and hold online events and meetings. But for their staff, the loss of collections is not only a professional blow, it is also a personal tragedy, because each of those holdings had been assembled over decades.