In 2018, a Russian translation of the book was banned by Ukrainian authorities, among other books. Beevor said he was "dumbfounded" at the decision to ban the import of 30,000 copies of the book. The ban was due to a law passed in 2016 which bans books imported from Russia if they included "anti-Ukrainian" content. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group called the ban "baffling". Serhiy Oliyinyk, the head of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting department on licensing and distribution-control, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that several paragraphs prevented the import of the books, citing a passage that purportedly said: "Ukrainian nationalists were tasked with shooting the children" so that they could "spare the feelings of SS Sonderkommando". He claimed that Beevor used NKVD reports as the source and that they were "not aware of such facts being revised at the Nuremberg tribunal", also accusing Beevor of falling for a "provocation". In response, Beevor called the statement by Oliyinyk untrue and stated that he used anti-Nazi German officer Helmuth Groscurth, who was a witness of the atrocity and reported it to another officer, as a source. Beevor also demanded an apology from Oliyinyk. A Ukrainian translator said there were "significant differences" between the Russian translation and the original English version, with the English text referring to "two police battalions" that participated in the Babi Yar massacre, while the Russian translation refers to "two battalions of Ukrainian nationalists", and another instance regarding the 1941 Bila Tserkva massacre where "Ukrainian militiamen" was translated to "Ukrainian nationalists". Beevor called the first translation from 1999 "flawed" and said that, regarding the second translation from 2015, he would be "very surprised if anything had been slipped in there on the Russian side or anything had been distorted, because they are extremely responsible publishers." Popular culture In the first series of the British Ch-4 TV comedy Peep Show (2003), character Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) owns a copy of Stalingrad. In an attempt to impress Toni, a neighbour he is trying to romance, he quotes facts he has learnt from Beevor's book. However, Mark is seen reading it throughout all nine seasons, implying that he has not actually finished the book in the 12 years that pass in the show. Notes References External links AntonyBeevor.com 1998 non-fiction books Books by Antony Beevor Works about the Battle of Stalingrad History books about World War II