The United States on Thursday returned dozens of valuable historical documents stolen from Russia, stressing bilateral cooperation over recent foreign policy clashes.
Eighty documents bearing the signatures of Russian and Soviet leaders from Catherine the Great to Joseph Stalin -- among thousands stolen from Russian archives in the 1990s -- were recovered by US authorities this year.
"Even though many people in Russia and the United States are always quick to point out the difficulties and differences between us, today you are witnessing just one more important area of cooperation," US Ambassador to Russia William Burns said at an official ceremony in Moscow.
Anatoly Vilkov, deputy head of Russia's federal cultural agency, said it was "hard to overestimate the importance of these documents," which ranged from military orders to personal notes.
In one document from 1792, the Russian Empress Catherine II's swooping signature adorns an ornate decree elevating the rank of "the true and kind" Lev Shatilov, an officer in her personal guard.
Collectors had offered between 5,000 and 15,000 dollars for each of the 80 documents when they were offered for sale on the Internet, putting their total value between 400,000 and 1.2 million dollars (293,000 and 880,000 euros), Vilkov said.
The documents were among the last to be recovered after what Vilkov called the "cynical and barbaric" theft of about 4,000 documents from historical and military archives in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in 1994, many in a single day.
Disputes over US missile defence plans in central Europe and the future status of Kosovo are souring current relations between Moscow and Washington, despite high-level diplomacy between the two sides.
