According to Polish media on Tuesday, Poland has received an extradition request from Ukraine for Russian archaeologist Oleksandr Butyagin, whom Kyiv accuses of carrying out illicit excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea.
According to Polish radio station RMF FM, the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office received the extradition request for Butyagin from Ukrainian authorities after he was arrested in Poland on December 4. Butyagin, 52, works at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where he oversees the ancient world department’s ancient archaeology division on the northern Black Sea coast.
In November 2024, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine accused an unidentified Russian national, later identified as Butyagin by Ukrainian media, of engaging in illicit excavations in seized Crimea.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Butyagin of conducting unapproved archaeological work at the ancient city of Myrmekion in the Kerch district of Crimea between 2014 and 2019, resulting in partial destruction of the archaeological site.
The archeological crew removed “the so-called cultural layer of the Ukrainian peninsula to a depth of almost two metres” during Butyagin’s digs, according to a statement from the Ukrainian security service SBU.
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