Don’t think for a moment that London has the monopoly on covert operations. Or that Moscow is the capital of unsolved crime.

A campaign of terror has recently been unleashed against Novgorod’s street art.

I discovered it while walking into town the other day and stopping by this sculpture near the market.

My first impression was of a piece of protest art. It looks for all the world like a statement about intensive farming - battery cows. You know, where the grass comes to them instead of the other way around. Not.

According to the babushkas at the bus stop, there was until recently a cow and a calf here. Actually a very cute calf with a little green hat. It seems that she was too cute by half and stolen in the night. Hence the wire cordon.

Counter-terrorism agencies in Novgorod have been quick to respond. Wandering along to the library, the local lions now sport a shiny new weld anchoring their rear paws to plinths.

Further along, on the way to the Asia Cafe, the dancing bear has also been repodiumed wih reinforced concrete. Freshly-drilled flanges are there to bolt him to the spot.

The crime wave happened too fast, however, for me to photograph the new ‘Tortoise and The Eagle’ sculpture down the street. Out of character for tortoises, the bronze ‘cherepaka’ had just performed the shortest leaving act in town.

You probably haven’t read about these hideous events in the mainstream media because it’s been difficult to politicise them or blame them on Putin in any normal journalistic way. And as it happens, stealing a statue doesn’t require any rogue KGB agents or Oligarch funding. Just tuck them under your arm and run off. The statues are usually hollow beneath a lightweight skin, as shown by this nice picture of a decaying Russian monument by Jon Snydal.