Stolen Russian artifact recovered

A religious icon that was stolen from Russia’s famed State Hermitage Museum was found dumped in a trash bin in St. Petersburg, police officials said Thursday.

The find of the wooden icon, identified as the Assembly of All Saints, came just days after Hermitage officials announced the theft of more than 220 items valued at more than $5 million -- an incident director Mikhail Piotrovsky blamed on museum workers.

Russian media said an anonymous caller alerted police that the icon had been left in a garbage container in a yard near the police office in charge of the Hermitage investigation.

“We carefully removed the bag, looked into it and indeed found an icon,” St. Petersburg police spokesman Valery Vekhov said on NTV. “The icon was in a good condition, albeit slightly disassembled.”