GENIA SAVILOV / AFP
A group of people were arrested on Friday December 2 after an attempted theft of a Banksy work. (Photo taken on Nov. 16, 2022 shows Banksy graffiti on the wall of a destroyed building in the town of Gostomel near Kyiv, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.)
STREET-ART – Luckily the picture survived. Ukrainian police managed to thwart an attempt to steal a work attributed to famous British artist Banksy and stenciled in a Kyiv suburb this Friday, December 2, local authorities said . This is the work depicting a figure with a gas mask on his face recently claimed by the artist.
“(Friday) in Gostomel, a group of people tried to steal a Banksy drawing. They cut the work (realized) on the wall of a house destroyed by the Russians, ”announced the governor of the Kyiv region Oleksiï Kouleba in a press release published on Telegram. His social media post was accompanied by a photo showing a wall where part of the outer cladding, orange paint, has been cut away. Here a person standing on a chair with a gas mask was stenciled.
Graffiti by British artist Banksy, a supporter of Ukrainian nationalism, has been excised from the wall in Hostomel, Kyiv… https://t.co/p39g3IavNb
—Dan Reznik | [email protected] (@DanReznikWSWS)
See the tweet
Several people arrested
According to Oleksiï Kouleba, “several people were arrested on the spot” by the Ukrainian police and “the drawing is in good condition and is in the hands of the police”. The police chief of the Kyiv region, Andrii Nebitov, said in a separate statement that “eight people have been identified”.
“All are between 27 and 60 years old. They are residents of “Kyiv and Cherkassy,” a city located 200 km southeast of the capital, he explained on Telegram, adding that “a preliminary investigation into property damage has been launched.” In mid-November, Banksy posted on his Instagram account images of a stencil work painted on a bombed-out building in Borodianka, another city in the Kyiv suburbs that has become a symbol of Russian atrocities, thereby confirming its authorship.
A series of Banksy-style stencil drawings began to appear in Kyiv and the surrounding area in early November. “Banksy’s plants in the Kyiv region are under police protection,” Oleksiï Kouleba said in his press release.
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