The National Museum of History of Ukraine received about eight thousand unique artifacts that were seized from the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea Valerii Horbatov.
This was reported by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and the National Museum of History of Ukraine.
In June 2022, law enforcement officers searched the Kyiv office of former MP, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea, and presidential representative in Crimea in 1994 Valerii Horbatov.
More than six thousand artifacts from various periods, from the Bronze Age to the late Middle Ages, were discovered there. In particular, a unique Hun sword with gold decoration, a golden Byzantine icon from the 9th–12th centuries, jewelry, helmets, icons, and other objects of historical and cultural value.
And during new searches, another hiding place was found in Horbatovʼs house with a large collection of antiquities, which could also have been illegally removed from the Museum Fund of Ukraine or found during illegal excavations.
During the pre-trial investigation, the defendant entered into a plea agreement and agreed to hand over his entire collection to the state, even those exhibits that were not discovered during the searches.
Now the collection of artifacts has been transferred to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine. This has become the largest addition to the museumʼs collection in the entire history of independent Ukraine.
Most of the items are unique and have no analogues in the museum collection of Ukraine. The collection contains a large number of valuable weapons and armor, including axes and swords from the Late Bronze Age, early iron swords, and examples of edged weapons up to the world wars.
Of particular interest are details of a womenʼs costume, fibulae and eagle-headed buckles of the Goths of the 6th-7th centuries AD from Crimea, and antique red-figure pottery from the 4th century BC.
The largest collection is the collection of coins from antiquity to the late Middle Ages, which includes about 6 000 items. Among them are coins of the Greek states of the Northern Black Sea Region — Olbia, Panticapaeum, Chersonese, as well as hryvnia coins of Princely Russia of the 11th-14th centuries.
Some of the artifacts can already be seen by museum visitors.
- In April 2022, the SBI employees exposed former MP Valerii Horbatov as financing the terrorist organization "DPR". After the occupation of Crimea, he continued to do business there and pay taxes to the occupiers.
- The former official also appropriated Ukraineʼs cultural heritage, which, according to preliminary information, was stolen from the museums of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and purchased from "black archaeologists”.
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