• kyiv Banksy paints seven murals in Ukraine

Ukrainian police on Friday thwarted an attempted theft of a work attributed to the famous British artist Banksy painted on a wall on the

outskirts of the capital, Kiev

, local authorities said.

"(On Friday) in Gostomel, a group of people tried to steal a drawing by Banksy. They cut the work (made) on the wall of a house destroyed by the Russians," announced the governor of the Kiev region,

Oleksiy Kuleba

, in a statement posted on Telegram.

His message was accompanied by a photo showing a piece of the cut wall.

It was there that an individual

wearing a gas mask

, standing on a chair, had been painted.

The original work of Banksy.GENYA SAVILOVAFP

"Several people

were detained

at the scene" and "the drawing is in good condition and in the hands of law enforcement," Kuleba added.

Kiev region police chief

Andriy Nebitov

said in a separate statement that "eight people have been identified."

The suspects are

"between 27 and 60 years old"

and are "residents of Kiev and Cherkassy", a city 200 kilometers southeast of the capital, he detailed on Telegram.

In mid-November Banksy posted on his Instagram account photos of a work painted on a bombed-out building in

Borodianka

, a Kiev suburb that has become a symbol of Russian atrocities, a way of confirming that he was the author.

In early November, several works made with

Banksy-style stencils

appeared in and around Kiev .

Kuleba noted that the works of the British artist in the Kiev region are

"under police protection."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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