Ukraine announced Monday that it had recovered a valuable collection of archaeological treasures loaned by Crimea to a museum in Amsterdam shortly before Russia’s annexation of this peninsula in 2014, following a long legal standoff . “After almost ten years of legal proceedings, objects from four Crimean museums and presented at the exhibition Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea in Amsterdam have been returned to Ukraine,” the national museum said of the history of Ukraine in a press release.
“The truck carrying 2,694 kilograms of objects of cultural value known as “Scythian gold” has arrived” at the museum of historical treasures in Kiev, the customs service for its part indicated on Telegram welcoming a “historic event”. They will be preserved in kyiv until Ukraine regains control of Crimea, the National History Museum stressed.
After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Ukraine on the one hand and four museums on the occupied peninsula on the other demanded the restitution of this invaluable collection. But the University of Amsterdam Allard-Pierson Archaeological Museum had said it would not do so until a judge had decided to which party the pieces should be returned.
In June, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled to return the collection to the Ukrainian state “and not to the Crimean museums” controlled by Russia since the annexation. This rich collection of objects dating from the second century AD to the early Middle Ages “belongs to Crimea and must be there,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov responded on Monday.