The Howard G. Buffett Foundation will finance the restoration of the Factor-Druk printing house, which was destroyed by a  russian missile strike on May 23. This was announced by First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine - Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yuliia Svyrydenko during her speech at the Book Arsenal.

According to her, philanthropist Howard Buffett will help the printing house pay for all the necessary equipment to resume work as soon as possible, so that Ukrainian children have access to textbooks, and publishers can continue printing books.

Howard Buffett has already worked with Serhi Polituchyi, the president of the Factor group of companies, to find the necessary equipment. According to Serhii Polituchyi, under favorable conditions, they plan to restore the printing house in 4-5 months.

In addition, according to Yuliia Svyrydenko, the Government programmes are also available for publishers. In particular, publishing houses and printshops will be able to receive a grant of up to UAH 8 million for the purchase of equipment or other needs.

“These funds do not need to be returned, it is only necessary to employ people. It is very easy to apply for participation in grant programmes - through the Diia portal. However, we understand that the grant is not enough to restore the Kharkiv Factor-Druk publishing house, so we turned to a good friend of Ukraine, the American philanthropist Howard Buffett. And he generously volunteered to restore Factor-Druk at his own expense. Many thanks to Howard for his support of Ukrainian book publishing. I thank Kharkiv for indomitability, stability and for continuing the struggle despite everything,” Yuliia Svyrydenko said.

Yuliia Svyrydenko also emphasized that the attack on the Kharkiv Factor-Druk printing house was not accidental, but another manifestation of russia’s systematic policy of destroying Ukrainian culture. The enemy’s attack significantly reduced the capacity of the book publishing industry. About 50,000 books were burned at the enterprise. Therefore, the restoration of the book publishing industry is one of the priority tasks.

Read more about grants from the Government for opening or developing a business at the link.