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The Banksy picture in Hostomel before the attempted theft
Photo: Ed Ram/Getty Images
A new painting by street artist Banksy has been carved out of a wall by criminals in Ukraine.
In the Kiev suburb of Hostomel, police officers arrested a group of eight people between the ages of 27 and 60, said the police chief of the Kyiv region, Andriy Nebytov, on Friday.
The picture of a woman in a dressing gown with curlers and a gas mask was confiscated on site.
The organizer is a man from Kyiv who was born in 1990.
A motive was not initially known.
The police took action after a call from residents.
They had watched the picture being cut out of the thermal insulation.
The Ministry of Culture has since been called in to decide on the further fate of the picture.
In November it became known that the mysterious British artist Banksy left a total of seven works in the Russian war-affected suburbs of Kyiv and in the Ukrainian capital itself.
At the end of February, Russian troops illegally invaded Ukraine.
che/dpa