When Russia annexed Crimea, the 2,000-year-old gold treasure was on display in Amsterdam – and was subsequently controversial between Ukraine and Russia. Now he has arrived in Kiev.
A treasure trove of gold dubbed “Crimean gold” returned to Ukraine from the Netherlands on Monday after nearly a decade. Historians at the National History Museum of Ukraine in Kiev thanked the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam for its careful preservation and help with its return home. The roughly 2,000-year-old hoard of gold, also known as “Scythian gold,” arrived in Amsterdam in 2014 from four museums on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula for an exhibition.
Following Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea Peninsula that same year, Moscow laid claim to the treasure. The exhibits remained in the Netherlands until the legal situation was clarified. In the summer of 2023, the High Council in The Hague rejected the Russian claim and ordered the return of the valuable cultural assets to Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov indignant: “It belongs to Crimea”
The gold “belongs to Crimea and must be there,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an initial reaction to the return of the treasures to Kiev. The Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, announced on Monday that he wanted to resolve the legal property dispute militarily-through a victory in the Russian war of aggression.
According to the Kiev Museum, the returned objects include 565 items. These include ancient sculptures, Scythian and Sarmatian jewelry, as well as 2,000-year-old Chinese lacquer coffins. The Scythians, after whom the collection is named, were an equestrian people on the steppes north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. (APA/dpa)