YAROSLAVL, November 12. /TASS/. Police are conducting an inspection after the Rostov Kremlin state museum preserve in Russia’s Yaroslavl region found out that two original paintings by Russian avant-garde artists Kazimir Malevich and Lyubov Popova had been replaced with copies at a certain point in time, the press service of the regional police told TASS on Monday.

"Additional pre-trial investigation continues" after the Rostov Kremlin had filed a report with the regional office of the Russian Interior Office "after which a proceeding decision will be made," the press service said.

The two paintings are Samovar by Kazimir Malevich and Non-Objective Composition by Lyubov Popova. Experts said last year that these paintings on display at the Rostov Kremlin were the copies painted in the second half of the 20th century.

The museum informed the Russian Ministry of Culture and filed a report with the regional office of the Russian Interior Ministry.

Sergey Sazonov, deputy director general of the Rostov Kremlin, earlier said the museum would like to return the original paintings that are currently owned by the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York said it had no information that the painting Samovar in its collection could have earlier been stolen in Russia.

According to information on the museum’s website, ‘Samovar’ was in possession of by Kazimir Malevich at least until 1920, then bought by the Moscow-based Museum Bureau of the Commissariat of Enlightenment, had been on deposit at the Museum of Artistic Culture in Vitebsk (Belarus) and then transferred to the Museum at Rostov-Yaroslavsky in 1922. In 1972, it was sold through Sotheby's, five years later it was bought by the McCrory Corporation. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the painting in 1983.

Last week, Sazonov said the museum preserve was engaged in a dialogue with the museums of New York and Thessaloniki. "We want this incident to unite our three museums instead of dividing them. We don’t want to see this turn into a kind of vulgar property division, this situation should not be viewed as a scandal," he said last week.

"First of all, this is an unusual story, a very interesting story, a detective involving brilliant works of art. And we, museums, should take advantage of this story for engaging in joint projects connected with these objects," Sazonov said.

The director of the museum department at the Russian Ministry of Culture, Vladislav Kononov, confirmed to TASS that last year an expertise carried out independently by two agencies confirmed that the paintings were forged.