The Russian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned efforts by French investors to seize a rare Russian art collection on display in Paris as a publicity stunt.
The collection, which belongs to the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, has been eyed by an association of French investors who still hold bonds issued by Russia before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and thus never redeemed.
The Russian foreign ministry issued a statement condemning efforts to collect the exhibit "as another publicity stunt that has absolutely no legal basis."
It added that the dispute had been officially settled by the governments of France in Russia in a May 1997 agreement.
"Because of this, we find any attempts to return the so-called tsarist debt as unacceptable," read the statement.
Sounds right to me.
Now about those Saddam-era Iraqi debts to Russia...
