PARIS (AP) — Two thieves sliced through a fence, climbed through a window and stole four valuable Renoir paintings Tuesday from a small museum on the French Riviera, but abandoned two of the artworks as they fled, authorities said. Investigators launched a national search for the perpetrators.
The whole operation took less than three minutes and targeted the most valuable works in the Renoir Museum in the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, the regional prosecutor's office said.
Click to Gallery
A barrier tape is set on the fence of the Renoir Museum after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
The entrance of the Renoir Museum where thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
The entrance of the Renoir Museum is pictured after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
A police car is parked in front of the Renoir Museum after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
The theft conjured up painful memories of the spectacular heist of crown jewels at the Louvre Museum in Paris last year and revived calls for better security and better funding for the many cultural sites large and small that dot France's landscape.
Cagnes-sur-Mer Mayor Bryan Masson estimated the value of the combined Renoir works stolen Tuesday at 9 million euros ($10.5 million), but art theft experts warned they will be extremely hard to sell.
The Renoir Museum is housed in the last home of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, where he lived before his death in 1919. It’s the most famous attraction in Cagnes-sur-Mer, situated between Cannes and Nice on the Mediterranean coast.
The “well-equipped” and “well-informed” thieves entered the Renoir Museum via the garden, Masson told reporters at the scene.
They sliced through a fence with an electric knife or saw, entered the museum through the ground floor, and then cut the clips securing the artwork frames, Masson said in remarks carried by local broadcaster Ici Azur.
The museum’s alarm system went off at 5:48 a.m. local time, and police arrived five minutes later, the mayor said. Their swift arrival “forced the burglars to flee in haste and helped limit the scale of the theft,” the mayor said in a written statement sent to The Associated Press.
Two of the stolen works were found dropped in the museum garden — Renoir's ’’Portrait of Madame Pichon″ and “Coco Reading,'' the prosecutor's office said in a statement. The two still missing are “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well.”
The museum had 12 works by Renoir in total, the mayor said. The museum was closed Tuesday while the investigation unfolded.
The Marseille prosecutor opened an investigation into theft by an organized gang. The French national office for traffic in cultural goods is joining the investigation.
“This incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums,” the mayor said.
Art theft expert James Ratcliffe of the Art Loss Register told the AP that underfunding is the main problem facing museums everywhere, not just in France. And smaller museums are especially exposed because of their limited finances.
‘’The theft of the Louvre has demonstrated to everybody with criminal intent that museums are potentially soft targets,'' he said. ‘’People are looking at museums differently.''
Unlike the Louvre heist or other recent museum thefts targeting gold or jewels that can be melted down or recut, the Renoir theft leaves the thieves in a predicament.
‘’Although the (paintings) are valuable, and will have probably seven figures attached to them in terms of the financial value, trying to find a buyer who will pay that is going to be almost impossible for them,'' Ratcliffe said.
‘’Unless they have a plan for that in advance, they’re not going to be able to just go to an art dealer and say, ‘Look, I’ve got these two nice Renoirs, would you like to buy them?’ ''
A barrier tape is set on the fence of the Renoir Museum after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
The entrance of the Renoir Museum where thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
The entrance of the Renoir Museum is pictured after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
A police car is parked in front of the Renoir Museum after thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin assured U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call Tuesday that Moscow doesn't harbor aggressive intentions toward Europe, a senior Kremlin official said, after European officials blamed Moscow for sabotage campaigns on their soil.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said meanwhile that U.S. envoys who visited Kyiv presented some “very good, worthwhile ideas” for ending Russia's 4 1/2-year-old war, adding that he hopes to meet with Trump within two weeks.
But Russia remains determined to accomplish its military goals and it believes it is close to winning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Ukrainian and Western observers, however, believe that Moscow has been unable to make any significant progress on the front line.
The war could yet drag on for years as Russia reconstitutes its forces and its defense industry, said U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby.
“We must be prepared for a protracted conflict and for Ukraine’s requirements to persist in the months and years ahead,” Colby told an online meeting of countries helping Ukraine.
U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff visited Moscow and Kyiv for separate talks with Putin and Zelenskyy over the weekend. The meetings appeared to produce no substantial breakthrough on ending the fighting, and both countries resumed their deadly air war after a weekend truce in their capitals for the American visitors.
The attacks killed seven people and injured 28 in Kyiv and the surrounding region, authorities said, officials from Russia reported three people killed and 13 wounded in areas it controls.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the hourlong conversation between Putin and Trump was “constructive and quite frank.” Moscow has a positive view of the results of the weekend visit by Witkoff and Kushner, he added.
There was no immediate White House comment on the call.
Ushakov told reporters that “in view of the speculation about Russia’s alleged hostile intentions toward European countries, it was underlined that we don’t have any aggressive plans regarding Europe.”
That claim runs counter to European authorities' versions of recent incidents, such as the German government last week blaming Russia for an attempted attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport in August using a drone laden with explosives.
Ushakov said Putin told Trump about the combat situation in Ukraine and Russia’s plans to make battlefield gains and achieve its military goals in what Moscow calls its “special military operation,” not a war.
Zelenskyy said he is counting on meeting with Trump around Sept. 20 — about the same time that the U.N. General Assembly is being held in New York. Putin isn't expected to attend.
He indicated he will press Trump to provide more Patriot air defense systems that Kyiv needs to counter Russia's ballistic missiles.
Ukraine needs 300 Patriot missiles from its partners’ stocks, 500 air-to-air interceptors and $2 billion for more drones, U.K. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting told the meeting of countries providing help.
Also on Tuesday, the European Commission approved a loan of 3.2 billion euros ($3.7 billion) for Kyiv to purchase components for Patriot air defense systems, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on its Telegram channel.
Zelenskyy thanked U.S. officials for their efforts to unblock negotiations with Russia, which have been stuck since early this year with little progress.
“As for the peace package that Kushner spoke about and the new ideas, I’ll tell you frankly, there were indeed a couple of very good, worthwhile ideas,” Zelenskyy said in audio messages answering reporters' questions.
The proposals will remain under wraps for now, he said, but he expressed hope that talks involving delegations from Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. can take place in the fall.
Ukraine is “ready to find a compromise” on the issues of grain exports and energy, he said. Moscow and Kyiv have targeted each other’s grain ships in the Black Sea, raising concerns that two of the world's major suppliers won't be able to get their produce to market.
Ukraine has also battered Russian oil facilities while Russia has pounded Ukraine's power grid ahead of winter.
Peskov said he believed “victory is very close” on the battlefield.
"We’re very confident in our military potential,” he told reporters, while insisting Russia wants to find a peaceful solution and welcomes Trump's diplomatic efforts.
Putin has sought to portray Russia as negotiating from a position of strength. But European officials and Western analysts say its bigger army is unable to make significant progress on the 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) front line, where it is pushing to capture the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, part of its industrial heartland.
“Russian forces will not seize Donetsk ... until 2032 at their current rate of advance — if they can seize it at all,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Sunday. “The Russian rate of advance has slowed significantly across the theater since 2025, when Russia’s rate of advance had already begun to slow.”
With troops bogged down on the battlefield, both countries have intensified their aerial campaign of drones and missiles.
Russia’s main targets in its overnight attack were Kyiv and the Odesa region of southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said.
Explosions were heard in Kyiv for nearly five hours, according to Vyhivskyi. More than 50 sites were damaged during the attack, including residential buildings, dormitories, schools, stores and gas stations, he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it “a horrific attack” and accused Putin of undermining U.S. peace efforts.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces overnight launched a massive strike on Ukrainian military industry facilities.
It provided a detailed list of its targets. They included places storing Ukrainian drones and cruise missiles, as well as transport, logistics and distribution centers for military cargo in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, the ministry said.
Associated Press journalists Vasilisa Stepanenko in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to acting governor of Tver region Vitaly Korolyov during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
A rescue worker puts out a fire of a building destroyed after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)
Smoke rises following a Russian missiles attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A man walks along an underpass as smoke rises following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
