At a bookstore in Kyiv, 33-year-old Yulia Sydorenko threw away a whole collection of old books – some gifts from childhood friends – that have recently lost their appeal.

Why? They were written in Russian.

“Since February 24, Russian books have no place in my house,” Sydorenko said, referring to the day Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

“I got them for my 20th birthday with inscriptions from my friends. I photographed them,” she said of the books she once treasured.

Showing off a collection of children’s books, she said she was convinced her children “will never read Russian fairy tales”.

Sydorenko is part of a constant stream of people lugging stacks of books, sometimes by suitcases or trolleys, to the Siayvo Bookstore.

Inspired by customers who wanted to clear out unwanted parts of their home libraries, the bookstore decided to recycle Russian-language books, breathe new life into the newspaper, and help the army.

“In two months we collected 25 tons of books. Their recycling brought in 100,000 hryvnia ($3,000),” Iryna Sazonova, the store’s owner, told AFP.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Donbass War in 2014, Ukraine began dismantling Soviet-era monuments and changing place names.

But since February, Ukrainians have been reflecting on the presence of Russian in private and public spaces, despite 19 percent of Ukrainians saying Russian is their mother tongue.

The Bulgakov Museum, where famous Kyiv-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov lived for 13 years, has come under pressure as the National Union of Writers of Ukraine seeks to shut it down.

Bulgakov has been accused of being imperialist and anti-Ukrainian, particularly in his novel The White Guard, which is the focus of the museum’s main exhibition.

“War is black and white, but in art, nuance is essential,” the museum’s director, Lyudmila Gubianuri, told AFP.

“There are many nuances in Bulgakov’s works, but people tend to ignore them,” she said.

Gubianuri accepts that the museum must adapt to reflect the challenges of the situation.

“Our team is working on a new concept that will be established in dialogue with the public,” she said.

People walking past the museum are divided.

For Anton Glazkov, a 27-year-old teacher, closing the museum would be wrong because “war and works of art are not always linked.”

But Dmytro Cheliuk, 45, who runs a nearby clothing store, said “it’s time we wrested ourselves and removed the Russian empire from our streets”.

Activist Oleg Slabospitsky takes a practical approach to removing Russian from public spaces.

Since the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, the 33-year-old has donned a high-visibility vest and lugged a stepladder through the city several times a week to remove overly Russian street signs like “Moscow Street.”

“These kinds of initiatives have to come from the people themselves,” he told AFP, before setting out with a friend to unlock three memorial plaques on Moscow Street.

In Kyiv, famous for its long avenues, the team sometimes spends entire days “de-Trussifying” the city’s streets.

Kyiv City Hall recently voted to rename 142 streets that contained references to Russia. Another 345 streets await the same fate.

Formerly known as “Moscow,” the street now honors the Ostrozky princes, a 16th-century dynasty of Ukrainian politicians.

At Shevchenko University, which was recently damaged by a volley of Russian missiles, management last August removed a plaque honoring Bulgakov, who studied there a hundred years ago.

Oleksandr Bondarenko, who heads a Slavic studies department, said the measure was “understandable” as the plaque could offend passers-by who lost loved ones in the war.

Russian language courses and works by Russian writers are no longer included in the curricula of Ukrainian schools. Instead, a new course on the war with Russia was added.

The history of the USSR is also now presented through the prism of imperialism.

Bondarenko’s faculty did not enroll any new Russian students this year because the literature and language programs are currently being adjusted.

“Information warfare courses are now at the heart of the curriculum,” Bondarenko said.

“In a hybrid war like this, you have to learn the language of the enemy to know them well. Sworn translators will be in high demand at war crimes trials.”