Last Wednesday, April 6, the Finnish customs confiscated in Vaalimaa - the border point between Finland and Russia - several works of art that were returning to Russia after having been part of exhibitions in Italy and Japan as an application of the sanctions imposed by the European Union. to Russia.

Sami Rakshit, director of the Finnish Customs department spoke about it in a statement “It is important that the imposition of sanctions works effectively” he continues “the application of sanctions is part of our normal operations and we always orient our controls according to the risks. The shipments that are now under criminal investigation were detected as part of our regular control work.”

For his part, Russian Senator Sergey Tsekov, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, reported this to RIA Novosti – the Russian state information agency – calling the seizure “extrajudicial” and calling Finland’s actions a “robbery.” ”. Finland, on the other hand, justifies its actions since its Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that in the list of sanctions imposed by the EU, there is a paragraph that speaks about works of art, which are considered "luxury goods", a term more widely mentioned in the sanctions list.

The works were facilitated to be exhibited in a gallery in Milan, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Udine and the Chiba City Museum in Tokyo. The works originate from the State Tretykov Gallery, the Russian State Museum of Oriental Art, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

The Finnish customs claims to have carried out an investigation of the works to proceed to store them taking into account their value, characteristics and security needs, however, Tsekov's indignation remained, mentioning "it seems that all of Europe, not only the EU and the NATO, she's gone crazy. Now works of art that belong to Russia cannot return to their homeland, to Russian museums."

However, Russia did not allow such to be the case, its strong protests continued and last weekend Finland was forced to return all the works to Russia due to legislative changes coming into force on April 9 within the sanctions that The EU designated Russia, among these changes, the seizure of works of art was excluded and with this, the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs no longer had a reason to be able to keep the works in its customs.

Sources: CNN and EsPostsus