About 170 copies of Russian classics were stolen from European libraries.

Up to 170 rare editions of classics of Russian literature worth more than 2.5 million pounds were stolen from European libraries between 2022 and 2023. This was reported by The Guardian on October 7.

The thefts followed a similar pattern — the attackers used forged documents, ordered books from the closed library storage under false names, sometimes replacing the stolen books with fakes. In total, about 170 books worth over 2.5 million pounds were missing.

For example, in October 2023, a young couple ordered eight rare editions of classical works of the 19th century from the closed hall of the Warsaw University Library, including works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. When they returned after a break, it was discovered that five books were missing. After this incident, library staff discovered that 74 books by Russian classics had recently disappeared from the library.

It is reported that no special magnetic tapes were installed on the old books. Unique copies were afraid to damage. It is because of this that the facts of the theft were not discovered earlier.

According to the newspaper, some of the books could be sold through auctions.

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On November 1, 2024, intruders broke down the door of an art gallery in the south of the Netherlands and stole two works from the famous series of stencil prints by American pop artist Andy Warhol, two more paintings are irretrievably damaged. The head of the gallery, Mark Pete Visser, said that thieves tried to steal all four works from Warhol's "Reigning Queens" series in 1985, which included portraits of the then queens of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Swaziland, a small kingdom now called Eswatini.

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