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Fire Hits Russian Publisher Embroiled in Ukraine Textbook Controversy

A fire hits a printing warehouse in Bogorodsky, east of Moscow. Russian Emergency Situations Ministry / TASS

Fire has ripped through a warehouse storing Russian schoolbooks, days after reports that publishers would remove mentions of Ukraine from the nation’s textbooks.

Firefighters were called to a warehouse owned by the Prosveshchenie publishing house in Bogorodsky, east of Moscow, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday.

The blaze was extinguished just over four hours later, a spokesperson for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told the state-run TASS news agency. 

They said that textbooks and other printing materials had been stored in the warehouse.

 

 

The fire follows reports that Prosveshchenie, one of Russia’s largest and oldest educational publishers, had ordered staff to remove "inappropriate" references to Ukraine and Kyiv from textbooks.

Staff members told independent Russian news outlet Mediazona that mentions of Ukraine had been removed from the company’s textbooks following Moscow’s invasion of the country’s on Feb 24.

 

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