Jean-François Julliard, director-general of Greenpeace France, told POLITICO the group dropped it off at EDF headquarters and then notified the authorities and the museum to come pick it up. Julliard said two Greenpeace employees were in police custody Wednesday.
Greenpeace claimed responsibility for the theft after the statue went missing Monday, claiming they were simply borrowing it.
Though the European Union has cut down on business with the Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it still buys Russian gas and other energy products, with France one of Europe’s biggest importers of Russian liquified natural gas.