The National Library of France declares the theft of Russian books from its collections. A complaint has been filed.
The thefts target original or rare editions of great Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin, kept in collections outside Russia. In Poland and the Baltic countries, in two years, shelves of 19th century Russian literature were plundered in the same way from libraries, with an increasingly sophisticated modus operandi. The BNF specified that it had strengthened its security procedures, which it reviews regularly.