The director of the State Hermitage Museum says hundreds of items are missing from the inventory of the famed Russian museum.
Mikhail Piotrovsky is downplaying the significance of missing objects, saying many were insignificant or went missing before World War II.
He didn't say Monday whether any of the objects had monetary or artistic value.
A sweeping government survey this summer revealed that up to 50,000 pieces have gone missing from Russian museums. The survey was ordered by former President Vladimir Putin after hundreds of thefts were discovered in 2006 from the Hermitage, housed in the grandiose czarist-era Winter Palace.
The thefts highlighted the funding crisis that has plagued Russia's cultural institutions since the Soviet collapse.
