Russia’s Propaganda Textbooks Go up in Flames in Spate of Mystery Fires
Anti-Ukrainian textbooks published by an education company with ties to Vladimir Putin burst into flames early Tuesday when a warehouse on the outskirts of Moscow became the latest site to be destroyed amid a spate of mysterious fires across the country.
Video released by Russia's Emergencies Ministry shows the warehouse of Prosveshcheniye (“Reconnaissance” in English) publishing house completely ablaze.
More than 100 firefighters were required to bring the 8-acre blaze under control, and even then it took four and a half hours, according to local media reports.
"When firefighters arrived, the whole area was on fire," a witness was quoted as saying by Russia's TASS news agency.
Citing a source in the Emergencies Ministry, TASS said the fire started right in an area housing textbooks and other printed materials. According to REN TV, the burned premises were rented out by Prosveshcheniye and another company called Stock Trading, which stored equipment on the premises.
The publisher, whose board is reportedly headed by Putin pal and former judo partner Arkady Rotenberg, recently made headlines for a decision to remove Ukraine from schoolchildren's textbooks in the wake of the February 24 Russian invasion.
"Our task is to pretend that Ukraine simply doesn't exist," said a publisher of the independent news agency MediaZona about the campaign.
The cause of the warehouse inferno was not immediately known, but it followed a series of fires on Russian territory near the border with Ukraine.
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Explosions were reported in the Russian city of Belgorod just hours before the bonfire, while a day earlier a railway bridge in the Kursk region was destroyed. Fires also broke out in oil storage facilities in Bryansk, from which Russian troops in Ukraine are believed to have drawn their supplies.
In April, Russian authorities announced that a fire at a Russian military research institute northwest of Moscow killed 17 people.
Authorities said preliminary information suggested faulty wiring may have been to blame for the incident.
Russia has blamed Ukraine for many of the other fires, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied that Ukrainian forces were behind it.
His advisor Mykhailo Podolyak called it karma and described it as an "absolutely natural process".
via TwitterAnti-Ukrainian textbooks published by an educational company with ties to Vladimir Putin went up in flames early Tuesday, as a warehouse on the outskirts of Moscow became the latest site destroyed amid a spate of mysterious fires in the country. Video released by Russia’s Emergency...
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