Disappearing books - How Russia is shuttering its Ukrainian library

A still image taken from video footage shows empty shelves and cardboard boxes with books at the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, Russia, March 9, 2017. Video footage taken March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Nikolai Isayev

MOSCOW (Reuters) - First, armed police seized some of its books. Next, its director was put on trial accused of stirring up ethnic hatred. And now, quietly, its shelves have been emptied and its volumes packed up, ready to be merged into another library's collection.

A year and a half after Russia's only state-run Ukrainian language library, Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature, was dragged into a political dispute between the two countries, Reuters has learnt that authorities are quietly winding it down.