Russian government hurriedly transferred the collection to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in a cover-up attempt. As of 2012 it is still unclear if one of the most famous works in the collection, Cypresses in Starry Night (1889) by Van Gogh, is at the Hermitage or remains in Moscow. In legal proceedings and political debates during the following years it appeared that collection might return to its rightful owner. In 2000, a group of 101 pieces from another part of Baldin's brigade, including Albrecht Duerers' 1494 watercolor View of a Rock Castle by a River, were returned to the Kunsthalle by Russia. This was followed by the simultaneous return of two artifacts of the Amber Room, bought and financed by a Bremen businessman to speed up the process. Anatoly Vilkov, from the Russian ministry of culture, stated that "Russia has no right to keep the Baldin collection. We did not receive this right through a gift, since by law the collection did not belong to the donor Baldin." Latest disputes, 2003–present The potential return of the collection to Germany began to face increasing opposition from Russian nationalist leaders, including Communist legislator and former Minister of Culture of the USSR, Nikolai Gubenko. Gubenko had been one of those involved in the 1991 transfer of the art to the Hermitage to hide it. The State Duma, which included Gubenko as a member, passed a non-binding resolution on 12 March 2003 asking President Vladimir Putin to prevent the Ministry of Culture from returning the Baldin Collection. Russian Minister of Culture, Mikhail Shvydkoy, opposed these moves to keep the collection in Russia; he regarded it as illegal loot based on a 1998 law that protected only those artworks from World War II taken by official Soviet trophy brigades and not private citizens. In 2003 he confirmed an order by the Russian General Prosecutor confirming a resolution of the Hanse Supreme court, which had decided the entire 364 remaining items were the official property of the Bremen Kunsthalle. Shvydkoy and the German Minister of Culture, Christina Weiss, even signed an agreement that 20 pieces of the Baldin ensemble could remain in Russia. Shvydkoy later received an official reprimand and was threatened by deputy prosecutor Vladimir Kolsenikov with criminal charges if he attempted to return the rest of the collection to Germany. In 2005 Aleksandr Sergeyevich Sokolov, Russia's new Minister of Culture, then contradicted