The Polish prosecutor’s office intends to bring charges of selling stolen property against the owner of a Moscow auction house and former expert of Russia’s Ministry of Culture, Sergey Burmistrov. The case concerns the theft of rare 19th-century books from the University of Warsaw Library, Onet reports. The investigation features a route through Belarus — according to investigators, stolen editions were transported from Poland to Minsk.
According to the publication, a key role in the case was played by Mikhail Z., who befriended employees of the University of Warsaw Library and visited it regularly from December 2022 to October 2023. He claimed to be a historian of Georgian literature and spent “whole days” in the reading room.
“He was talkative, full of anecdotes, and could talk about books for hours,” the article notes.
“Most often he hid them under his sweater or in a bag and then carried them into the restroom, where he lifted a ceiling tile and stashed the loot. After finishing work in the reading room, he went to the restroom, retrieved the books, and took them outside,” said Bartosz Jandy, a member of the international investigative group for the ‘Pushkin’ case.
When stealing certain volumes, he replaced them with counterfeit books. Library staff scanned only matching barcodes, and the fake copies were returned to the shelves instead of the real editions.
“Interestingly, these forgeries were far from perfect. Often they were completely different books, just with sheets of paper glued on with library stamps and barcodes,” Jandy added.
In 2020, the reading room for old collections was relocated to the general reading room, and its staff were not trained to monitor more valuable editions. They were guarded in the same way as ordinary books.
“Mikhail Z. analyzed everything from the start. He selected specific items and had plenty of time. He spent entire days in the library. He observed behavioural patterns. He constantly went out to smoke, and this became such a habitual part of his routine that staff eventually stopped paying attention,” Jandy said.
In total, the man stole 78 works from the University of Warsaw Library, all from the 19th century, worth over 3.8 million złoty. Among them were first editions of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, and Ivan Krylov.
He packed the stolen books and handed them to a bus driver travelling from Warsaw to Minsk. There they were to be picked up by a client. Mikhail Z. received payment remotely, in cryptocurrency.
The investigation indicates that he also visited the library of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, but did not manage to steal anything there.
On 16 October 2023, a Georgian couple, Mat T. and Ana G., came to the University of Warsaw Library, posing as Slovak students and presenting forged IDs. In the reading room, they requested eight works by Pushkin and Gogol, taking pens and notebooks with them.
After some time they took a break and went out to smoke. When they did not return, concerned staff inspected the books left on the tables and discovered that five of the eight volumes were missing. The couple had concealed them in specially sewn pockets inside their clothing.
The incident was reported to the police. Meanwhile, the pair left Warsaw for Vienna, where they handed the stolen books to an accomplice — the partner of Beqi T., a Georgian previously arrested in Latvia for stealing rare Russian literature from the National Library in Riga. Mat T. and Ana G. then returned to Tbilisi.
They soon learned that the works they stole were worthless — someone had replaced the originals with fakes. It turned out that the real books had already been stolen earlier by Mikhail Z., and the Georgian couple unknowingly took the counterfeit copies. After their arrest in Georgia, the scheme became clear. The Polish investigation accelerated, and University of Warsaw Library staff reviewed how many works had actually been stolen. Previously, they had not realized anything was wrong.
The investigation revealed that Poland was not the only victim. Similar thefts of rare books by Russian authors occurred in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, the Netherlands, and the Baltic states. In all cases, the same method was used — replacing originals with forgeries.
An international investigative task force “Pushkin” was created, with representatives from all affected countries.
“We met regularly in The Hague to exchange key information obtained during our investigations. This was important because — as we later learned — all the thefts were carried out by the same group of Georgian nationals,” said prosecutor Jandy. “This was not a typical Georgian gang associated with Poland in the 1990s — dangerous and ruthless. It was more a group of book dealers, antiquarians, whose appearance and behaviour raised no suspicion.”
A major breakthrough for the Polish investigators came with the arrest of Mikhail Z. in Lithuania. During questioning in September 2025, conducted by prosecutor Bartosz Jandy in a Lithuanian detention centre, he confessed to stealing all 78 antique books from the University of Warsaw Library and described in detail how he had done it.
He also named a Moscow antiques dealer who had allegedly commissioned him. However, investigators determined that this person did not exist.
“The fact that Mikhail Z. took full responsibility may indicate he was covering for someone,” Jandy noted.
Another mystery remains: why members of the same group — Mat T. and Ana G. — stole the fakes previously planted by Mikhail Z.? According to the prosecutor, there are two possible explanations: the group tried to cover its tracks, or there was internal competition among different factions.
Although Mikhail Z.’s testimony did not lead to identifying the client, investigators established that eight works stolen from the University of Warsaw Library had been officially sold at auctions held by the Litfond auction house in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Its owner, Sergey Burmistrov, previously worked as an expert for the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Photos of the auction lots showed University of Warsaw library stamps. Burmistrov insisted that his operations were legal and that all documents were in order. Among the sold books were Krylov’s “Three New Fables”, Pushkin’s “The Robber Brothers”, and Gogol’s “Collected Works”. The auction house earned around 1 million złoty from these sales, the article states. The current whereabouts of the books are unknown.
“It is difficult to determine whether the Russian state or oligarchs linked to the government were behind these actions. However, I am convinced that such an auction house could not sell these items without the knowledge and support of the Kremlin,” said the prosecutor.
He doubts that the thefts can be viewed directly as an act of hybrid warfare.
“I would bet more on imperial-style collecting trends among Russian buyers than on organized operations by Russian intelligence. GRU deals with sabotage, subversion, and military intelligence. In the case of these old books, I would suspect commissions — government-inspired, yes, but ultimately from Russian oligarchs,” he said. “After the invasion of Ukraine, there was a fashion for 19th-century works, from the period when Russia prospered as an empire after Napoleon’s defeat. It fits the current climate, and many oligarchs certainly wanted such books in their collections.”
The Polish prosecutor’s office emphasizes that due to the current geopolitical situation, it cannot conduct procedural actions against Burmistrov, but it plans to issue a warrant for him. The chances of recovering the stolen books in the near future are considered low.
Jandy says it is necessary to properly catalogue the missing editions in relevant institutions and add them to the list of stolen works.
“Over time, such items can ‘resurface’, for example in the collection of a wealthy buyer. Therefore, the situation must be monitored,” he concluded.
