Ukraine has requested the extradition from Poland of an archaeologist who was detained in Warsaw earlier this month on suspicion of conducting illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea, according to the Polish media.
The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office received the extradition request from Kyiv authorities for Oleksandr Butyagin, following his apprehension in Poland on December 4.
Butyagin, 52, is an employee of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where he leads the archaeology division specializing in the Northern Black Sea region, which encompasses Crimea. Polish authorities arrested Butyagin in Warsaw while on a lecture tour across Europe, with a planned final destination in Belgrade. A Polish court placed him in custody until January 13 while the extradition process unfolds.
In November, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office charged Butyagin with illegal excavations of the ancient city of Myrmekion in the Kerch district of Crimea from 2014 to 2019 without permits from Ukrainian authorities, allegedly resulting in significant damage to the site. The Ukrainian security service SBU said in a statement that Butyagin’s archaeological team was removing “the so-called cultural layer of the Ukrainian peninsula to a depth of almost two metres,” per Euro News. Ukrainian authorities estimated repairs will cost more than 200 million hryvnia (roughly $4.75 million).
If the Polish court approves Butyagin’s extradition to Ukraine and he is convicted, he faces a sentence of 1 to 10 years in prison.
Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Butyagin’s detention “legal arbitrariness,” while his colleagues from the Russian Academy of Sciences have decried the detention as “absurd in its motivations.” The State Hermitage Museum said in a statement that Butyagin obeyed international standards during the expeditions.
Butyagin has overseen excavations of Myrmekion, an ancient Greek colony established in the early 6th century BCE, since 1999, according to statements he made to Russian state media in 2024. Located near present-day Kerch in Crimea, Myrmekion is one among many heritage sites ensnared in the ongoing legal and ethical controversy over Russia’s 2014 annexation and subsequent invasion of Ukraine.
In May, the European Union sanctioned a Russian museum for the first time over its activities in Crimea. The “Tauric Chersonese” State Museum-Preserve on the outskirts of Sevastopol, Crimea, and its director, Elena Morozova, were sanctioned for “undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine.”
The historic sanction followed a demand from a group of art experts, who called on the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a nongovernmental organization that sets industry standards for participating museums, to eject Russia for violating the organization’s code of ethics.
Last year, Ukraine accused Russia of transforming the Tauric Chersonese, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, into a “historical and archaeological park” and called on the United Nations to intervene. The site is an ancient city founded by Greeks in the 5th century BCE on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Ukraine and its allies do not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, a vital entryway into the Eastern Mediterranean, and have campaigned for its recovery since its annexation.
In November, the Allard Pierson Museum, a historical museum in Amsterdam, incited minor controversy when it returned 400 artifacts, including prized Sythian gold, to a Kyiv museum. The collection was loaned to Amsterdam from four museums in Crimea before the annexation, and after the incident, both Ukraine and Crimea demanded the artifacts’ return.
“This was a special case, in which cultural heritage became a victim of geopolitical developments,” Els van der Plas, director of the Amsterdam museum, said in a statement.
