On a Saturday morning in August, Viktor Kruglov, the co-founder(联合创始人) and chief executive of the publisher Ranok, was at his headquarters(总部) in Kharkiv – the eastern Ukrainian city that, along with Kyiv, is the centre of the country’s publishing and printing industry. Built 15 years ago on the site of a former bread factory, the footprint(占地面积) of the premises is about 10,000 sq metres (107,640ft). Books were stacked 12 metres high on rank after rank of(一排又一排的) shelves.
八月的一个周六上午，出版商Ranok的联合创始人兼首席执行官维克托·克鲁格洛夫正在哈尔科夫的总部。这座乌克兰东部城市与基辅一道，是该国出版和印刷业的中心。总部建于15年前，所在地原是一家面包厂，占地面积约1万平方米（107,640平方英尺）。一排排书架上，书籍堆到12米高。
Kruglov, along with five senior colleagues, were on the warehouse floor(仓库现场) to discuss the approaching school year. The warehouse was holding 628,000 new schoolbooks. “It was the high season(旺季) of distribution,” he said, “so we were checking all our processes: how to do it more successfully, how to do it in time(按时).”
克鲁格洛夫和五位高级同事正在仓库现场，讨论即将到来的新学年。仓库里存放着62.8万册新教科书。“当时正是发行旺季，”他说，“所以我们正在检查所有流程：如何更顺利地完成，如何按时完成。”
The meeting was scheduled for 11am. But a couple of moments after it began, there came “the sound of an explosion, and almost simultaneously(同时地) I saw a huge fire”, said Kruglov. The impact(撞击点；影响) was about 30 metres from where the staff were gathered, and, as colleagues set about(开始着手) trying to put out the flames(扑灭火焰), “there came a second strike and I understood that there could be a third, and a fourth, so we started to evacuate(疏散)”.
会议定在上午11点。但开始后没过多久，就传来了“爆炸声，几乎同时我看到了巨大的火光”，克鲁格洛夫说。爆炸点距离员工聚集处约30米，当同事们开始试图灭火时，“第二次袭击来了，我意识到可能还有第三次、第四次，于是我们开始疏散”。