Aleksandr Butyagin is being wrongly held on a Ukrainian warrant over “absurd” claims he was “destroying cultural heritage,” Moscow has said
Russia has condemned the detention by Poland of a prominent Russian archaeologist at Ukraine’s request, whom Kiev has accused of “destroying cultural heritage” during excavations in Crimea.
Kiev still disputes Moscow’s sovereignty over the peninsula, which boasts a rich and precious archeological heritage dating back thousands of years, and insists that research and excavations there must be authorized by Ukrainian officials.
Aleksandr Butyagin, a senior researcher at the St. Petersburg State Hermitage Museum and a veteran classical antiquity specialist, was detained in Warsaw last week as he was traveling through Europe to deliver a series of lectures, Polish outlet RFM reported.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said the scientist is suspected of “illegally conducting excavations” at a heritage site in Kerch without permits from Ukrainian authorities, claiming that such work “actually destroy[s] a legally protected object of national importance.”
It also accused Russia of conducting “illegal restoration work” in Crimea – which was often neglected by Ukrainian authorities before it overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 – in an alleged effort to “distort the history” of the peninsula.
In a statement on Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the detention, stressing Ukrainian charges have no legal grounds as Crimea is “an inseparable part of the Russian Federation.”
“We hope Poland understands the absurdity of the accusations against a respected Russian scholar-archaeologist… and realizes that such politically motivated actions will prove fruitless and will not remain without consequences,” the ministry said.
Butyagin has more than 120 published works and has led excavations in Kerch since 1999, as well as a long-running joint project in Italy. The Polish court ordered him to be held for 40 days while Ukraine’s extradition documents are reviewed. Should Butyagin be extradited and convicted, he could face a sentence of up to ten years in a Ukrainian prison.
The dispute comes amid other cultural property rows between Moscow and Kiev, including a protracted legal battle over the so-called Scythian gold collection discovered in Crimea and loaned abroad before 2014. Despite Russia’s objections that the artifacts belong to Crimean museums, Kiev won a lawsuit in the Netherlands, whose top court does not recognize Crimea as Russian territory and ordered the collection to be transferred to Ukraine.
