Some Ukrainian schoolchildren will start the new academic year without printed books. Ukraine's Minister of Education and Science, Andrii Butenko, officially confirmed that, due to a series of targeted missile and drone strikes on printing houses and logistics warehouses, it is physically impossible to finish printing the runs by September 1. The relevant ministry is urgently switching schools to a hybrid format of material provision: no student will be left without learning resources, and the missing printed books will be replaced with electronic versions and PDF copies available in the open domain.

Scale of the losses: burned runs and damage assessment

The crisis over teaching materials grew throughout the summer of 2026. As a result of massive attacks on the publishing infrastructure — in particular, on the facilities of "Konvi," the warehouses of "Megapolisgraph," and other book-printing complexes in July–August — warehouses of finished products and hundreds of thousands of blanks burned to the ground. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, more than 1.2 million copies of books that had already been packaged and prepared for shipment to the regions have been destroyed.

The industry's direct financial losses, according to the Ministry's estimates, amount to 120–150 million hryvnia — this is the cost of urgently reprinting the lost runs. The government is negotiating support for the affected publishers in order to restore the production chains within a shortened timeframe.

How children will study from September 1

Despite the shortage of new physical books, the ministry emphasizes that the educational process will not be disrupted. A multi-component provision plan has been developed. First, schools will temporarily use the surviving stocks of textbooks from previous years, whose service life is 4–5 years. Second, all required textbooks, including the NUSH standards for grades 4 and 9, have been fully published in the open domain in electronic (PDF) format — free digital access is guaranteed for every student.

When distributing the first new paper batches, priority is given to frontline communities and rural schools with weak internet connectivity, so that printed books appear first precisely where digital access is limited. For Ukrainian children abroad, the digital format will become the main tool for studying the Ukrainian studies component — language, literature, and history.

Reprinting and delivery schedule

The process of urgently reprinting the lost runs at the surviving production facilities has already been launched. However, logistics chains and a paper shortage make it impossible to issue the books instantly. According to the Ministry's schedule, the restored print runs will be delivered to educational institutions in stages — during September and October, and the situation is planned to be stabilized and the printed paper textbooks fully delivered to all educational institutions by November 1, 2026.

Analytical summary

The strikes on the book-printing infrastructure aimed to create humanitarian chaos before the start of the academic year. At the same time, the digitalization of Ukrainian education, tested over the previous years, allows this blow to be quickly cushioned. The main challenges for the Ministry over the next two months will not be the absence of materials as such, but the technical provision of children with gadgets in frontline regions and the energy resilience of schools for working with interactive devices amid power outages.