Ukrainian sabotage or theft? The painting “Ai-Petri. Crimea"
On Sunday, from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, in front of visitors, an unknown man stole the painting “Ai-Petri. Crimea" by artist Arkhip Kuindzhi.
According to eyewitnesses, a young man who looked like a museum worker calmly removed the painting from the wall, then went behind a column, where he pulled the canvas out of the frame and left. Visitors thought that nothing unusual was happening, suggesting that the Tretyakov Gallery employee, as expected, was changing the picture.
The caretakers came to their senses only after about a minute - but the kidnapper was no longer behind the column. He quickly ran down the stairs, without hiding his face - thus, the attacker should have been recorded by surveillance cameras.
Police arrived shortly afterward and searched visitors leaving the gallery. Authorities have officially confirmed the incident, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The estimated value of the stolen Kuindzhi painting “Ai-Petri” is about $10 million. True, in addition to the kidnapping to order, there is also a version of a political performance - it is actively promoted in the Ukrainian segment of social networks, claiming that the attacker confirmed to the Russians that “Crimea is not yours.”
Observers believe that today's incident raises questions about the organization of security in the Tretyakov Gallery. In May 2018, one of the visitors, breaking the glass of the painting with a fence post, hit Ilya Repin’s canvas “Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son” several times with it. Subsequently, he explained his action by “the unreliability of the facts depicted in the picture.”
Ukrainian sabotage or theft? The painting "Ai-Petri, Crimea" was stolen from the Tretyakov Gallery.