Factor Druk in Kharkiv resumes work after being destroyed by Russian troops

The Kharkiv printing house Factor Druk, which was destroyed by Russian shelling in May, is resuming operations, reports Radio Liberty.

The company is mass printing textbooks for the new school year and recruiting new staff.

The debris after the missile strike has been cleared, the premises were partially repaired, and new equipment has been put into operation.

Factor Druk CEO Tetyana Hryniuk says that the strike primarily affected the bookbinding workshop, which was destroyed. However, she says, the repairs have already been carried out and the roof, ceiling, and walls have already been rebuilt.

Factor Druk CEO Tetyana Hryniuk shows the rubble left of the equipment destroyed by the Russian strike. Screenshot of a Radio Liberty report by the IMI

Colleagues from other printing houses helped Factor Druk train new staff. "They took in our students, taught them, trained them, and then sent them back to us," says Hryniuk.

It is reported that the printing house cannot yet work in the same capacity as before, performing the full printing cycle from the design to the binding. The printed books are passed over to other printers for binding and supplying them to stores and schools.

"Now the main thing we can do is print. We printed 'History of Ukraine', 'World History', 'Physics', 'Art', many textbooks in general. The ones we did before were for the 7th grade, and now we are printing for the 1st-2nd grades," said Tetyana Hryniuk.

So far, the printing house has calculated losses estimated at over 10 million euros, but expects that sum to grow in the future.

The company did not discard the destroyed equipment, planning to make a memorial to the employees who were killed by the strike.

The printing house strike

On May 23, 2024, Russian troops targeted the Vivat printing house in Kharkiv, killing seven employees and injuring 16.

According to Kharkiv oblast Chief Prosecutor Oleksandr Filchakov, over 50 staff members were in the printing house when two missiles hit it. A large-scale fire broke out after the impacts.

On May 24, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced that 50,000 books burned down in the printing house destroyed by the Russian strike on Kharkiv the previous day.

The police identified all those killed in the Russian strike on the printing house in Kharkiv.