Russia threatens to cut museum ties with the Netherlands over Crimea gold

Alec Luhn
Telegraph
Thu, 16 Nov 2017 15:06 UTC

Russia has threatened to cut off museum exchanges with the Netherlands if it upholds a decision to give Ukraine ancient gold artefacts left in limbo when Russia annexed Crimea.

Speaking with state news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday, culture minister Vladimir Medinsky said a 2016 court decision to hand over more than 2,000 Crimean artefacts to Kiev was "absolutely politicised" and "destroys the system of exchanging exhibits". Russia has appealed the ruling.

Comment: The sore losers in the corrupt western establishment have been pulling out all the stops to intefere with Crimea's democratic vote to return to within Russia's borders: Revisiting the Crimean referendum: The truth behind Crimea's reunion with Russia

"This can be compared only with the plundering of museums during Napoleon's Italian campaigns or the fascist aggression" of the Second World War, Mr Medinsky said.

"If this ruling comes into force, I won't have the right to sanction any exhibits on the territory of a country where a most dangerous precedent of seizing cultural treasures is being created," he added.

Four Crimean museums lent 2,111 invaluable cultural artefacts created by the Scythians, a race of nomadic horse warriors who dominated the Eurasian steppe in the centuries before Christ, to the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in February 2014.

But the future of these showpieces in the museum's Crimea - Gold and Mysteries of the Black Sea exhibit came into question when Russia took over the peninsula in the following weeks.

Comment: So if Crimea is legally now part of Russia, why would the museum in Amsterdam think of returning them to the Ukraine, a country no longer affiliated with Russia? What's the deal with the Scythian gold and Crimea?

Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky speaks at an international cultural forum at the State Hermitage Museum on Thursday Crimea Gold Museum Amsterdam

The vast collection includes a fourth century BC gold helmet engraved with warriors, a spiral gold bracelet with birds and other animals, a Chinese lacquer box from the first century, a statue of a sea goddess and a bronze pommel depicting a griffin attacking a deer.

Although the insurance valuation of the collection was $2 million, Crimean authorities have said several of the artefacts were completely unique and would fetch an exponentially higher price on the open market.

A court in Amsterdam ruled in December 2016 that only sovereign countries could claim objects as cultural heritage and therefore the artifacts should be delivered to Ukraine, where their future could be decided by a Kiev court.

Ukrainian authorities welcomed the decision, but the Crimean museums soon filed an appeal. New hearings were expected to begin this autumn. The Russian culture ministry has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on high-powered lawyers in the case.

Comment: Russian Ministry says Dutch court's ruling on Scythian gold violates international law

In September, the British Museum opened an exhibit of similar artefacts from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg called Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia, which runs through January.

An August dig at the grave in Crimea of a Scythian woman who lived in the first century unearthed 140 pieces of gold jewelry, which the head of the Crimean institute of archeology said would help "fill the hole" left by the artefacts now in the Netherlands.

Comment: Gold artifacts found in Scythian grave mounds support claims of ancient Greek historian

Earlier this month, Ukraine's culture ministry complained to UNESCO that renovations by the new Crimean authorities are destroying the Bakhchysarai Palace, a 500-year-old former residence of Crimean Tatar rulers that is listed as a tentative Unesco world heritage site.