Oleg Surajev Gifted Books to Children of Ukraine at the Event Held at VU

On Friday afternoon, Oleg Surajev, comedian and founder of the "1K" support fund for Ukraine, gave over 500 children's books from the best Ukrainian publishing houses to Ukrainian children at the Writers' hall in the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University (VU). This campaign aims to support Ukrainian culture and invest in the future of Ukrainian children.

"Language is a weapon and a resource of the war in Ukraine. As Russia has declared, there is a "culture war" in which language is not simply a tool but part of the Russian invasion of the region. Therefore, children's books in Ukrainian are the most important cultural investment that can save lives in the future. As you know, in Ukraine, those regions where a large part of the population speaks Russian suffer the most because Russia thinks it has the right to "protect" them. Another problem is that Russian publishing houses are also quite politicized, and cultural propaganda often falls into children's hands. With this and similar actions, we will strive to make more books in the Ukrainian language appeared in Lithuania", said O. Surajev about the event.

Masha, a Ukrainian who visited Writer's hall and has 21 and 15-year-old children, says that this promotion is essential for those who like to read and love books.

"For younger children up to 6 years old, you can still find Ukrainian fairy tales in city or school libraries, but for older children, Ukrainian books are difficult to get. We mostly borrow books from each other. We took one book from home in Ukraine, but we have already read it many times. Now we will read these", she says.

Organisers also invite to act sustainably and pass on the books you read to other families. In addition, a certain amount of books will be transferred to the libraries of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and other cities.