Russia Split Over Art Booty

A senior Russian official has angered the country's nationalists by announcing that Moscow is close to agreeing the return to eight European countries of art "appropriated" by the Red Army during the Second World War. He said Russia had agreed to return a collection of paintings to the Netherlands which are currently housed in Moscow's Pushkin Museum. The collection is reported to include canvasses by Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Rubens and Tintoretto, and is valued at up to half a billion dollars. Russia is estimated to have 260,000 pieces of "trophy art" acquired by the Red Army, three million archive items and 1.5 million books. For the full story - click the title Irish Art