Finland will return to Russia three shipments of works of art, which were confiscated by the customs office, the Foreign Ministry of Finland has announced.
The paintings and sculptures - worth $46 million - were on their way from Italy and Japan to the Russian museum when they were seized at the Vaalimaa border on suspicion of non-compliance with European sanctions against Russia, Customs director Hannu Sinkkonen was quoted as saying. .
In a statement, Finland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the European Union changed existing rules to exclude some cultural artifacts from the sanctions list. The legislative changes came into effect on April 9, after which customs officials granted permission for the export of the works of art. The rule change was made only for "cultural goods that are borrowed within the framework of formal cultural cooperation", the statement says, without further elaboration on the motivation for the exception.
Many of the confiscated works were on loan from Russia's State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Museum of Oriental Art, for display in two Italian galleries, Milan's Piazza Scala and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Udine. Other works of art were returned to Moscow's Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts from the Chiba City Museum in Tokyo.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been hit with harsh sanctions by the European Union and the United States of America. The Foreign Ministry of Finland has announced that the list of sanctions of the European Union included art, which has been characterized as "luxury goods".
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The sanctions complicated Russia's efforts to retrieve its cultural property, currently on loan to European institutions, amid rapidly deteriorating international relations. In March, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, requested that several loans of high-profile works be withdrawn early from display in Milan and Rome. Meanwhile, the governments of Spain, Austria and France have suspended relations with Russian museums and pulled some of the popular works from a planned exhibition at the Kremlin Museum.
France's Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, said in a statement that the country's participation in Russian cultural events "could have been used as a sign of a divergence between the countries of Europe", reported the newspaper "Le Monde".
The French government agency announced on Saturday that at least two paintings on display at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, in a successful exhibition of works by Ivan Morozov, the late Russian businessman and collector of French avant-garde art, will remain in France.
of the works belongs to the Russian oligarch Petr Aven and the rest is the property of the Dnipropetrovsk Art Museum in Dnipro, Ukraine, AFP reports. Aven, a financier with known ties to Putin, is currently the target of sanctions. His paintings will not be returned to Russia, "as their owner will continue to be targeted for asset freezing," the Ministry said in a statement.
The statement continued that the second painting, by Russian artist Valentin Serov, will not be returned to Ukraine "until the situation in the country allows for its safe return." He emphasized that this decision was "at the request of the Ukrainian authorities".
The Morosov exhibition closed in April. Most of the exhibition's works – about 200 paintings – belong to the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the St. Petersburg Hermitage.
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Transport of the collection will be by land to accommodate restrictions on air travel between Western Europe and Russia.
Translated by: Mirjete Sadiku
