Russland verstehen

The Russian bookstore chain Chitai-Gorod has spent around 100 million rubles removing books that do not comply with Russia’s new censorship laws. The company has spent tens of millions more on labeling books containing references to drugs, the chain’s CEO, Alexander Brychkin, told RBC. “We can’t just throw these books in the trash. They are toxic waste. So they have to be destroyed, and we have to pay for that too,” Brychkin added. According to him, a significant share of the costs comes from the fact that the books cannot be returned to suppliers. Instead, the company has to write them off as losses and pay for their destruction. The books are sent through industrial shredders, and the process is recorded on camera. Additional costs include removing the books from shelves, transporting them to warehouses, and processing them. Millions of books in the nowadays Russia are “toxic waste”