US returned more than a century old priceless documents back to Russia. These documents went missing many years back, from the archives at St Petersburg & Moscow. Total twenty one documents were returned to Russia.

Sergey Kislyak the Russian Ambassador was provided with the documents by John Morton Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US. The handing over was done at an occasion in the Washington based Russian Embassy.

Morton said that this act set right any injustice to the cultural heritage of Russia. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak glorified the joint US-Russia operations that led to the procurement of the documents. The documents included decrees signed by the Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia and also the empress Catherine the great. These documents were important turning points in the history of the nation; that created Soviet Union and also the empire of Russia. He said that only with the co-operation between the two nations, this task has been possible and the documents will finally dwell where they belong.

These documents form only a small portion of the total thousand documents that were stolen from the national archives. The theft occurred in 1994-2002.

The ICE agents planned an action to bring back the documents based on the information given by Russian property conservation officials after learning that several of these documents were on auction in the US. Several more documents have also been detected which will be returned to Russia very soon.

The owners gave up the documents when they were informed that there were stolen. The auction houses also were at no fault because the documents have changed many hands before reaching these places. Former Russian ambassador James Collins said that the documents were probably stolen as papers having original autographs!

These documents were auctioned at $15K, but these documents determining the making of a great nation were beyond money.