Stolen Paintings Verona Museum Are Found in Ukraine from.

ROME — Paintings stolen from a museum in Verona six months ago have been found in Ukraine and will soon be returned to Italy, officials from both countries have said.

The 17 paintings, including works by Rubens, Tintoretto and Mantegna, were recovered by Ukrainian border guards, in what President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine described on Wednesday as a “brilliant operation,” The Associated Press reported.

The guards found the paintings wrapped in dark plastic bags and buried under leaves near the border with Moldova, The A.P. said. News footage dated May 6 from the Ukrainian Border Service showed border guards removing the paintings from the bags.

The paintings had been whisked off the walls of the Castelvecchio Museum in November by masked and armed robbers who tied up a security guard and an employee just as the museum was closing. In March, Italian officials announced that 12 people in Italy and Moldova — including the security guard — had been arrested in connection with the theft.

On Thursday, Margerita Bolla, the director of the Verona museum, lauded the recovery as “magnificent news.”

“We now await their return to Verona, in our museum, so they can be admired again,” she told the news agency ANSA.