RUSSIA WILL CONSIDER RETURN OF TROPHY ART

Russia will return so-called trophy art taken from Nazi Germany during World War II only on a case-by-case basis, an official said Friday, arguing that most of the cultural treasures Moscow retains were seized as compensation for huge Soviet wartime damage. As Judith Ingram reports in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Anatoly Vilkov, deputy chief of the Russian government agency that preserves the nation’s cultural legacy, said Russia held some 249,000 art objects, more than 260,000 archive files and 1.25 million books and publications seized as compensation. Germany and other countries have pressed for the return of the collections, which they argue were taken illegally.