Ancient Scythian Gold, Crimean Treasures Returned to Ukraine After Dispute With Russia

An expert from the National Museum of History of Ukraine unpacks a box in Kyiv containing ancient artifacts from Crimea on November 28.

The transfer of hundreds of artifacts, known as the Scythian gold, marks the end of a protracted legal battle over ownership rights between Ukraine and the museums located in the Moscow-controlled territory.

A museum expert displays ancient gold artifacts.

Featured in a 2014 exhibition called Crimea: Gold and Secrets from the Black Sea at Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum, the artifacts were transferred to Kyiv following a June order by the Dutch Supreme Court.
 

A detailed view of the Tovsta Mohyla breastplate of the Scythian king from the fourth century B.C.

The Dutch court ruled that the trove of ancient artifacts was part of Ukraine's national heritage and did not belong in Russian-annexed Crimea.

This sword and scabbard, which the nomadic Scythians left behind during the Greek colonization of the peninsula, are among the artifacts. The Scythians were expert artisans who used a variety of methods, including forging, inlaying, and casting.


 

The pectoral from the Tovsta Mohyla.

The ancient treasures were on loan when Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum dismissed as illegitimate by the UN General Assembly.

A gold helmet from the fourth century B.C. 

Moscow has disputed Ukraine's claim in the Dutch courts for nearly a decade, arguing any failure to return the artifacts from four Crimean institutions violated their loan agreement. 

Objects on display in Amsterdam in August 2014. 

The Scythian gold, as it is often called, “belongs to Crimea and must be there,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a press conference on November 27, according to the Russian media outlet Interfax.

The dispute over the artifacts has come to emblematize the territorial disputes between the two nations -- one that escalated dramatically in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Following the closure of the exhibition in 2014, the institution did not know where to send the loaned items, so it took the matter to the Dutch courts in what became a decade-long legal process.

An image provided by the Allard Pierson Museum from its 2014 exhibition

 

The artifacts “cannot be returned to Crimea for an obvious reason - - [they] cannot be given to the occupier, the robber,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a tweet praising the court’s decision in June.

A spiraling torque from the second century A.D. 

“Of course, it will be in Crimea -- when the Ukrainian flag will be in Crimea,” Zelenskiy added.

Museum officials reiterated that the items would be “kept until the deoccupation of Crimea."