During Covid, Ukraine’s population bought books, thanks to a government vaccine initiative. Now there is no time to read, they can still be useful
I’ve lived in Kyiv since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – and now I’m an internally displaced person again. After a Russian military plane was shot down in front of my windows, my family and I were evacuated to a safer place in Lviv, western Ukraine. As editor of the media outlet Zaborona, I spend days working from our temporary home, collecting evidence of the war.
Shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the coronavirus pandemic brought an unexpected cultural breakthrough in the country. Ukraine had one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world, and the Ukrainian Books Institute, a relatively new government agency, came up with the idea of offering “culture vouchers” as a reward for getting a Covid vaccination. With each 1,000 hryvnia voucher (about £25) you could buy tickets to a movie or a concert, a gym membership or books. The majority of citizens spent more than 1bn hryvnias on books.
