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Forty years ago, a schoolboy from Leningrad Alexander Butyagin signed up for an archaeological club and went to Crimea for his first excavations — to dig the ancient Greek city of Myrmekion. This event determined his future life. At the excavations, he met the Leningrad archaeologist Yury Vinogradov, whom he would later call his teacher. Then he graduated from the History Department of Leningrad State University and began working as a laboratory assistant at the State Hermitage Museum.
Ukrainian archaeologist Nadia Havrylyuk says she remembers him as a gentle man, but a careerist, like "this can be said about each of us".
She recalls that Ukrainian archaeologists from Soviet times were friends with Russian colleagues. They participated in excavations and conferences: “They went to us, and we went to them”.
When Havrylyuk visited her colleagues at the Hermitage, she watched the young scientist Alexander Butyagin grow up — “he had a lot of enthusiasm”.
In 1991, Ukraine and Russia became independent states. Ukraine allowed Russian archaeologists to continue excavations in Crimea. Butyagin regularly traveled to the Myrmekiy settlement with Vinogradov, and in 1999 he led the expedition in his place — it is customary for archaeologists to pass on a monument "by inheritance."
In 2003, an expedition led by Butyagin found a treasure in Myrmekion — 99 gold coins. The find was discovered by Hermitage archaeologist Dmytro Chystov with one of the students who worked on the excavation, but the laurels went to Butyagin. Two years later, he was appointed head of the Northern Black Sea Region sector in the Department of the Ancient World of the Hermitage.
Hermitage archaeologist Dmytro Chystov retrieves a hoard of 99 coins (staters) found in Myrmekion in 2003. The coins were hidden in a Greek bronze jug.
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Butyagin began to appear in Ukraine when he was studying at the institute — he came to interesting archaeological conferences. One of them was held in Kharkiv in 1992. Butyagin spoke about his work in Myrmekion, after which, as Havrylyuk recalls, he was invited to speak at the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Butyagin knew how to please people, recalls archaeologist Evelina Kravchenko, who met him more than twenty years ago when she was working on excavations in Crimea. He donated books, gave professional advice and, unlike other Russians who dug in Crimea, avoided political topics, in particular Ukrainian-Russian relations.
He was respected as a scientist, it was said that “he did not make mistakes or blunders”. Over the decades of work at Myrmekion, Butyagin became an archaeologist of antiquity, specializing in excavations of ancient cities, necropolises and sanctuaries.
In Crimea, many young people were around Butyagin — from outright scammers who bought dissertations to talented scientists who wanted to break into the St. Petersburg archaeology circle through him. Kravchenko says that until 2014, the Hermitage in Ukraine was about the same status as the British Museum or the Louvre: it had a powerful archaeological school, funds, funding for expeditions, and most importantly, recognition.
"We have always considered those who were published in Moscow or St. Petersburg to be stars. I also started to be taken seriously in Kyiv only after my publications in St. Petersburg,” says Evelina Kravchenko.
Butyagin (center) at the excavations in Myrmekion in occupied Crimea, 2014. Myrmekion settlement.
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The older generation of scientists looked back at Russia (“what will they say in Moscow?”) out of habit from Soviet times, the younger generation — “because archaeology was funded in Russia, but not here,” says Kravchenko. Due to the lack of funding, everyone was satisfied with the need to work with the Russians and “smooth out the corners”.
In the 2000s, Ukrainian border guards raided a train from Crimea to Moscow and found several artifacts in the possession of Russian archaeologist Vladimir Tolstikov. He did not have documents that would allow him to take them out of Ukraine. The artifacts were taken from him, and the scandal was hushed up, because Tolstikov was the head of the Bosporus expedition from Moscow.
Kravchenko worked on excavations on the peninsula near Inkerman and observed how some young Ukrainian archaeologists fell under the influence of their Russian colleagues. They said that Kyiv was a province, and St. Petersburg and Moscow were scientific centers.
The influence of Russian archaeologists on Ukrainian colleagues was so great that after the annexation of Crimea, “many of our antiquities scholars said that they were Butyagin’s students, and only a full-scale invasion silenced them”.
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By 2014, 12 Russian expeditions were working in Crimea, an American one in the Tavrian Chersonese reserve, and over 30 Ukrainian ones, says Nadia Havrylyuk. In 1997-2010, she headed the field committee at the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
The committee annually issued an open qualification letter to an archaeologist, with which he applied to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine for permission to carry out excavations. According to Ukrainian law, Russians, like other foreigners, could not obtain a permit in their own name.
Therefore, they were issued to someone from the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv or to the head of the reserve where foreign expeditions were to work. Ukrainians were formally considered the leaders of the expeditions.
Archaeologists studied the settlements of ancient people, Greeks (ancient times) and barbarians — Scythians, Goths, Huns — in Crimea. The field season was in the summer, and in the fall and winter, scientists wrote reports — what they had researched and found.
They submitted the reports to the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv, taking copies for themselves to write scientific papers. The found artifacts were transferred to the Crimean museum. It was forbidden to take things out of the peninsula.
In 2018, Butyaginʼs expedition found a marble statue in Myrmekion. Such statues had not been found in the settlement before; they were made in the 2nd century AD.
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The Hermitage in Crimea had three or five expeditions with Butyagin, and the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences also had its own expeditions.
“Our Institute of Archaeology had no expeditions, they had no money,” says Kravchenko. Ukrainian archaeologists found patrons and grants, particularly in Russia, or participated in newly built expeditions. There were those who worked on excavations for the Russians to earn money, and then dug up their own monuments on them, adds Odessa archaeologist Kyrylo Lipatov.
He recalls that some Russian archaeologists, including Vladimir Tolstikov, were outraged that they had to obtain permits in Kyiv every year for excavations. Lipatov heard from Russians, “how inconvenient it is that there is a state border between the European and Asian Bosporus [between Crimea and the Taman Peninsula]”. Butyagin did not say this openly to his Ukrainian colleagues, Lipatov recalls, but “it was a widespread opinion among Hermitage archaeologists”.
The Myrmekion settlement, where Butyagin worked, began to be studied in the 18th century. The first was the French émigré Paul Dubrux. He lived for a while in Volyn, then in St. Petersburg, from where he moved to Kerch and founded a museum of antiquities.
After his death, Myrmekion was studied by various archaeologists, and during Soviet times, excavations at the site were monopolized by Hermitage scientists: first Viktor Haidukevych, then Yury Vinogradov and Butyagin. The Hermitage has always positioned this excavation as a two-hundred-year study of Russian archaeology.
“Russians traveled to Crimea as if it were their home and considered Crimean antiquity their own,” says archaeologist Oleksandr Symonenko.
If any Ukrainian wanted to dig in Myrmekia, there would be a scandal in Russia: "You have encroached on our interests," says Symonenko. Archaeologists are not accustomed to stealing each otherʼs monuments — it is a matter of professional ethics.
There have always been few archaeologists in Ukraine, two or three hundred people, adds Symonenko. For comparison — in Russia or Poland there are three to five thousand. Ukrainian antiquarians from Kharkiv worked in Chersonese, but most of our researchers excavated ancient cities in the Mykolaiv region: the kingdom-city of Olbia, the island of Berezan, from which the Greeks settled the Northern Black Sea region and Crimea in the 7th-6th centuries BC.
For many years, the prevailing opinion among Ukrainians was that they and the Russians were developing Ukrainian and Russian science, says Kravchenko, but this is not so. The Russians worked only for themselves — “pulling objects out of the ground to publish articles in the Hermitage and foreign collections”. They did not help Crimean museums equip museum space, for example, premises to store artifacts that they handed over there.
In contrast, the American expedition of archaeologist Joseph Carter, who worked in Chersonese for 20 years, built a large restoration laboratory in the reserve, studied Crimean restorers in the Louvre and the British Museum, and supported Ukraine when it sought to have Chersonese included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
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The harbinger of the seizure of Crimea for Evelina Kravchenko was that in 2012 the Americans canceled the expedition to Crimea, and Russian archaeologists began to tell her to her face that permits for excavations would soon be obtained in Moscow.
After the illegal referendum in the spring of 2014, Kravchenko came to Sevastopol to talk to her Crimean colleagues and realized that “Ukrainians will not be able to work here”. The Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine announced that it would stop issuing permits for excavations on the peninsula, and those who would conduct them would violate Ukrainian and international laws on the protection of cultural heritage.
Some Russian archaeologists stopped their research. There were many who hesitated, but their doubts were dispelled with money.
“At first we kept in touch, and they wrote: ʼNothing personal! It is paid so much that you won’t earn in your lifeʼ. I saw their salary slips. The Russian archaeologist on the expedition received RUB 120 000 a month, they paid the Crimean ones 30-40 000,” says Kravchenko.
In 2019, an expedition to Myrmekion found a burial from the 4th century BC — the grave contained Greek vessels and an empty sarcophagus. A small sarcophagus. Presumably a ritual burial in honor of someone who died outside the city.
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Since 2014, Russians have been receiving permits for excavations in Moscow at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Butyagin was among them. From the moment the peninsula was occupied until 2025, his expedition did not arrive in Myrmekion only once, in 2020, due to the pandemic.
In parallel, Butyagin worked in Italy. Since 2010, he has led the Hermitage expedition near Pompeii, exploring the villas of Stabia, which were covered with ash by Vesuvius two thousand years ago. The Hermitage expedition worked at the expense of an Italian foundation associated with the Vesuvian International Institute for Archaeological and Humanitarian Research.
The Italians did not break off cooperation with Butyagin because of his work in the occupied Crimea. They continued it even when in 2019 Ukraine imposed sanctions on him and 22 other Russian archaeologists for working in Crimea. Butyagin’s excavations in Stabia ceased only in 2022, cause the full-scale invasion began.
On February 24, 2022, Butyagin wrote on Facebook that he sympathized with Ukrainian friends and acquaintances and “all of us too”, meaning Russians. This was the only thing he said publicly about the war. He closed comments under the post.
Butyaginʼs expedition, which in 2022 found a treasure of 30 coins in Myrmekion. The obverse of the coins depicts the goddess Athena, while the reverse depicts the winged goddess of victory Nike.
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During the Great War, Russian archaeologists became unwelcome guests at European conferences, but they were sometimes invited. Butyagin came to Europe as a private individual. His scientific activities were concentrated in the Crimea.
During the 12 years of occupation, his expedition found in Myrmekia a meter-long marble statue of a deity, a sarcophagus, a marble statue of Hercules, and most valuable of all, a pot with 30 gold coins from the time of the Macedonian kings Alexander the Great and his brother Philip Arrhidaeus.
“For the Hermitage, Crimea is one of the priority archaeological regions,” Butyagin said in 2024, adding that in 2024, five or six museum expeditions will work on the occupied peninsula.
A few months later, in November 2024, the Crimean prosecutorʼs office, based in Kyiv, declared Butyagin suspicious and summoned him for questioning. He was accused of illegal excavations in the occupied Myrmekion (without Ukrainian permission), of destroying the monument and causing damage to the state of Ukraine in the amount of more than UAH 200 million.
The punishment is up to five years in prison. Among the evidence collected are Butyaginʼs publications on Facebook, excavation permits that he received in Moscow. The scale of damage to the ancient settlement, according to investigators, was determined using satellite images.
Butyagin responded by saying that he was surprised, “when the fate of Ukraine is being decided on the battlefield, prosecutors waste time on this”, because he was “simply engaged in the case to which he dedicated his life”.
In April 2025, a court in Kyiv arrested Butyagin in absentia and put him on the international wanted list. In court, the prosecutor said that Butyagin was planning to go to Cyprus to give a lecture in the next few days.
In Limassol, tickets for his speech “Mythical Monsters of Ancient Greece Where They Live” were being sold for €65. Despite the decision of the Ukrainian court, Butyagin was not detained in Cyprus. It happened six months later in Poland.
In 2025, a well seven meters deep was found in Myrmekion.
In October 2025, one of the employees of the Ukrainian public organization “Archaica Research Laboratory” was in Athens and saw an announcement that on November 9, Alexander Butyagin would give a lecture at the Acropolis Museum about the study of Myrmecion. “Archaica” contacted the Ukrainian embassy in Greece, and they contacted the Greek Foreign Ministry, and the museum canceled the Russian’s speech.
“Then our diplomats found an announcement that in December Butyagin would be going on a lecture tour of four European capitals — Amsterdam, Prague, Warsaw, and Belgrade. As I understand it, they passed this information on to Kyiv. We didn’t sit idly by either,” says Ukrainian archaeologist Symon Radchenko, a member of “Archaica”.
Symon Radchenko researched the Stone Tomb in Ukraine, which is now occupied by the Russians. The artifacts found there were stolen by the Russians and taken to Crimea. Among the members of "Archaica" are antiquarians who cannot work in Crimea and on the ancient monuments of Berezan Island, because "everything is shot through there", says the archaeologist.
Radchenko wrote to the organizers of Butyaginʼs lectures, a private company called “Curiosophy.events”, which is linked to Russian Dmitry Aleshkovsky, the son of Russian historian Tamara Eidelman. In the letter, he said that Butyagin was violating international law by working in occupied territory.
The archaeologist was told that until a court decision is made, a person is presumed innocent, and Butyagin "loves history, is committed to preserving cultural heritage, and has respect for the past and future of Ukraine".
“The last phrase made me laugh the most,” says Radchenko.
At the end of November, Alexander Butyagin gave a lecture in Prague and Amsterdam. And on December 4, he arrived in Warsaw, settled in a hotel, where he was detained by officers of the Polish Internal Security Agency at the request of Ukraine. Butyagin was taken to a pre-trial detention center and a few days later a Polish court arrested him. The extradition process to Ukraine began.
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Butyagin has been in pre-trial detention since December 4, 2025, and will remain there until at least March 4, unless the court extends his detention. On January 12, the Warsaw District Court recognized that the principle of double criminality, necessary for extradition, was observed in Butyaginʼs case. In Poland, penalties of up to 20 years in prison are provided for illegal excavations, vandalism, and appropriation of cultural heritage in occupied territory and in areas where hostilities are ongoing.
On January 15, a convoy took Butyagin to the court, which was deciding whether to extradite him to Ukraine. As he walked past journalists, he said he felt fine. The hearing was held behind closed doors. During the breaks, Butyaginʼs lawyer Adam Domansky recounted the proceedings to journalists.
According to him, Butyagin stated that he was a “man of science” and that his excavations were “a cause for the good of humanity”. Extradition to Ukraine would threaten his life and health, as he is Russian. According to the lawyer, Butyagin admits that he worked in Myrmekiyon without a permit from Ukraine, but could not obtain it “due to force of circumstances” due to “geopolitical events that took place in 2014”.
The defense asked the court to postpone the hearing because it did not have time to familiarize itself with the case materials. It also asked the court to oblige Ukrainian prosecutors to provide more information about the essence of the charges and how they calculated the material damage of UAH 200 million. The judge refused the defense and continued the hearing.
However, the decision was not made — the defense filed a motion to disqualify the judge, suspecting him of bias. Butyaginʼs case is being heard by Judge Dariusz Lyubovsky. In October 2025, he refused to extradite to Germany Ukrainian Volodymyr Zhuravlev, who is suspected of undermining the “Nord Stream” pipeline.
It is unknown when the next hearing will take place. If the court agrees to extradite the archaeologist to Ukraine, the final decision will be made by Polish Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek, who also serves as the Prosecutor General.
Butyagin has been in a pre-trial detention center in Warsaw since December 4, 2025.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
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In the pre-trial detention center, Butyagin is sitting in a cell with two men. Who they are is unknown. During the day, he is taken out for an hour to walk in the yard. Once a week, he has the right to call his relatives or a lawyer. He does not have access to the Internet. He can write letters — but only to the official mail of the Russian consulate.
A lawyer, Russian diplomats, a priest and relatives once a month have the right to visit him in the pre-trial detention center, but they cannot come — there are no visas. Friends wanted to give Butyagin a warm jacket, a book and a TV, but the pre-trial detention center refused them.
Butyaginʼs family wrote about the conditions of his detention on social media. They created a group in his support to raise money for a defense attorney. The Hermitage refused to pay for Butyaginʼs lawyer.
When the Russian archaeologist was detained, the museum said he had always adhered to “both legal and ethical” international standards for conducting archaeological research.
In a letter to the Polish Minister of Justice, Hermitage Director General Mikhail Piotrovsky called Butyagin’s detention a “provocative political action” and the accusation of working in occupied Crimea a “cynical restriction of academic freedom” that sets an “extremely dangerous precedent for the persecution” of archaeologists working in “conflict areas”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Polish ambassador, Krzysztof Krajewski, and expressed a "strong protest" to him — Butyagin freely moved around European countries and only in Poland did he have problems. The accusations against him "are absurd in nature", he cannot be handed over "to the hands of the punitive machine of the Kyiv regime".
Russian archaeologists on social media say that Butyagin is a researcher with a capital letter, and "science is outside of politics".
Butyaginʼs lawyer in Poland is Adam Domansky.
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Alexander Butyagin, in his defense, says that he is researching Myrmekion because it is his lifeʼs work. Ukrainian archaeologist Vyacheslav Baranov worked in Crimea until 2014.
"I also dedicated my life to monuments in Crimea, but Russia occupied them," the archaeologist says.
After the occupation, Baranov took his wife and newborn son from Crimea and settled in Kyiv. He is currently researching the Baltic burial ground near Bila Tserkva.
The scientist says that not all archaeologists who lived in Crimea were able to leave, so he does not condemn those who remained and are forced to work there — “they are hostages of the situation”. They should be treated differently than Russian archaeologists, in particular Butyagin.
"Most Crimean archaeologists had no choice, Butyagin did. I know Russians who have been digging in Crimea all their lives, but after 2014 they started studying the Bosporan Kingdom on the Taman Peninsula," says the archaeologist.
No matter how good a scientist Butyagin is, with his excavations in the occupied Crimea he helps the Russian regime legitimize the occupation, Baranov believes. He calls Butyaginʼs lectures in Europe propaganda — "he creates the illusion among Europeans that there is science and archaeological excavations in the occupation," because he does not tell abroad about the museums in Kherson and Melitopol looted by the Russians, the monuments destroyed by shelling, or the arrest of biologist Leonid Pshenichnov.
Butyagin is also silent about the fact that exhibits are being taken from Crimean museums to Russia "under the guise of temporary exhibitions" and that the number of "rescue excavations" on the peninsula has increased tenfold, when a monument is quickly explored so as not to interfere with construction workers, says Baranov. Military towns, fortifications, roads used to transfer military equipment are being built on archaeological monuments.
“They really do terrible things there,” says Baranov.
The most tragic fate befell the Chersonese reserve. In a place that UNESCO prohibits building without the organizationʼs permission, an amphitheater, hotel, childrenʼs center, artificial river, and museum appeared, where they tell the story of "Christianity, Crimea, and Novorossia".
The complex was called the New Chersonese Historical and Archaeological Park. This is a personal project of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his confessor, Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov). Builders used bulldozers and excavators to remove layers of earth, destroying artifacts.
New buildings in the Chersonesos reserve. Previously, the river was underground, but during construction it was "revealed." The Russians erected a monument to Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv, stating on the website of the Chersonesos reserve that this new building "symbolizes the continuity of Russian history." The new building of the Museum of Christianity, behind which is located a museum about the history of Crimea and the so-called Novorossia.
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“They destroyed everything there for archaeology. The reserve staff and Russian archaeologists from the Hermitage did not react to this in any way,” says Baranov.
According to Baranov, Russia uses archaeology as a tool to influence the world. After all, it is not only excavations, but also an international exhibition and the inscription "found by Russian archaeologists", as well as constant communication with scientific elites in other countries and influence on them.
“Thatʼs why in Europe they say that Russian scientists, not Ukrainian ones, should be protected from Putin. The problem with our government is that it has never understood the importance of archaeology for state-building processes,” says Baranov.
It was only after the full-scale invasion that Europeans began to perceive what was happening in Crimea differently, Baranov believes. In late 2025, he was in Germany at a conference, where he spoke about excavations during the occupation. His report sparked a debate — there were no people who would say that science is outside of politics, Baranov says, “but some of them — and they were Russians — were silent”.
He says that there are many Russian scientists working in Germany who also "receive a salary" at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
"Now these people are silent about excavations during the occupation because the position in Europe is changing. But I understand that they will secretly promote their ideas that ʼscience is outside of politics,ʼ" he says.
Baranov talks to Russian colleagues living in the West. Many of them support Butyagin and fear for their lives. Baranov tells them there is no need to worry if “you did not work in Crimea”.
He supports Butyaginʼs extradition, saying "it would be fair". If it happens, he plans to go to court — "but only once, no more".
Evelina Kravchenko also hopes that Butyagin will be extradited to Ukraine:
"I can testify in court about the activities of Russian archaeologists during the occupation."
Nadia Havrylyuk says that “Alexander is a fool” who continued excavations in occupied Crimea, but “now he has.” He and other Russian archaeologists thought they would not be held accountable for their actions.
The only thing she disagrees with is that Butyagin is blamed for damaging the Myrmekion: “He is a professional field worker and digs well.”
Butyagin remained in her memory as a young, ambitious student whom she met in 1992 at a conference in Kharkiv. He is now 54 years old.
Butyagin admits that he conducted excavations in occupied Crimea.
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