Ukraine recovers 4 stolen Dutch paintings
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukrainian officials have announced the recovery of four paintings from a trove of Dutch Golden Age art that was stolen from a Dutch museum more than a decade ago.
At a Thursday briefing showing the four paintings, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said work will continue to recover other pieces of art burglarized from the Westfries Museum in 2005.
Klimkin said it's believed that other paintings are in the possession of criminals in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between separatist rebels and Ukrainian forces broke out two years ago.
There were no details on how the 16th- and 17th-century paintings were recovered.
The museum said last year that two people claiming to represent a Ukrainian nationalist militia had contacted the Dutch Embassy in Kiev, seeking a 5-million-euro fee for the paintings' return.
Late development in the situation surrounding the new government in Kyiv:
The White House said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden congratulated Volodymyr Hroysman in a telephone call and urged the new premier and his team to "move forward quickly" with reforms in order to maintain international support for the government in Kyiv.
These include fulfilling Ukraine's International Monetary Fund (IMF) commitments, implementing the Minsk agreements aimed at regulating the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and confirming a new "reformist" prosecutor general, the White House said in a statement.
Read more here.