Max Levada is an archaeologist on a mission, not to find the holy grail nor keep neo-Nazis from marching across Europe with the Ark of the Covenant leading their way to victory , but to save Ukraine’s national antiquities, looted artifacts and collectible treasues from black market would-be plunderers.
Working from Kyiv, without a dusty fedora and bullwhip, archaeologist Max Levada leads Ukraine’s only permanent taskforce tracking antiquities traffickers. His three-person team monitors online auctions around the clock, helping prosecutors seize hoards ranging from Roman fibulae to Cossack sabres.
Since 2022 they have recovered over 15,500 artefacts and lodged 130 criminal complaints, a record showcased in museum exhibitions as Ukraine races to align its heritage laws with tough new EU import rules due next June.
Levada, an archaeologist by training, heads the National Historical Museum’s “heritage monitoring group,” the country’s only permanent unit of researchers dedicated to tracking and recovering trafficked antiquities. Three researchers scan Ukrainian and international auction sites round the clock, flag suspicious lots, and draft criminal complaints to the Prosecutor-General’s Office. Another half-dozen numismatists and material-culture specialists compile expert reports once the objects are seized.
“It is far more than a full-time job: if you take this on, you must accept you will not have time for anything else,” admits Levada. “It isn’t only the daytime – we work through the night, watching auctions because sometimes you need to track not just who is selling but also the buyer. We monitor foreign auction houses and various forums, night after night, with no weekends off, as much as we can manage.”
Their the results speak for themselves. From roughly 6,500 items on 15 August 2023, symbolically unveiled at an exhibit on Ukraine’s Day of the Archaeologist, the tally has grown to 15,500 by January 2025. The museum has filed over 130 criminal complaints, many of which have already led to prosecutions.
The museum’s campaign against illicit antiquities began only after he joined the institution in 2022. Before his arrival, “nobody was doing the job”, he says, “because it was easier to complain about “inadequate laws” than to act”. Ukraine already had laws, but no dedicated body and, crucially, no specialist willing to shoulder the work. Police officers, he notes, are not trained archaeologists. “A police [officer] should not be expected to distinguish a brass key or a bronze samovar tap from an antique fibula.”
What was missing was a professional who could step in: “This should be done by a specialist, someone who can come and inform the police that what’s being sold isn’t rubbish, but something of real [cultural] value. Only then will the police officer or prosecutor be willing to take action.”
Levada’s decision to take that role in 2022 turned abstract legal provisions into active investigations, leaving a backlog of cases from his very first year still working their way through the courts.
Illicit digging is hardly new in Ukraine, but Russia’s full-scale invasion has made the situation worse as national priorities shifted to defense. Levada is candid about the scale: “We see buckets, literal buckets, of Late Roman brooches for sale online.” Eager to make a quick buck, organised middlemen exploit Ukraine’s location as Europe’s last open-air bazaar, buying locally, moving goods west, into private collections or the grey art market.
Indeed, the scale is too great for a team of three to handle, as Levada admits “We would drown in paperwork if we tried to prosecute every lot.” Instead, his team prioritises complete hoards and high-value assemblages that clearly demonstrate a common findspot.
“The article we invoke most often is No. 193 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code – misappropriation of a hoard that has cultural value” explains the archaeologist. “Under the Civil Code such a hoard belongs to the state.”
“The catch is that Article 193 is treated as a misdemeanour rather than a felony, so in the past the police avoided it. They have to show more solved felonies than misdemeanours. Since we began working together, though, their attitude has started to change.”
Although, it seems the cause of increased attention from law enforcement is not political necessity but public opinion, as the museum expert explains. “Showing boxes of cash taken from a bribe-taker is no longer sensational – but display a set of striking, mysterious archaeological pieces, especially unique ones, and journalists are all over it. Because of that media interest, the police have gradually come around. This year we have had several cases solved within three days; previously they dragged on for months.”
No matter the reason, for Ukraine, external pressure is mounting. From 28 June 2025 the EU’s Import of Cultural Goods Regulation (Regulation 2019/880) becomes fully operational. Every object older than 200 years entering the Union will require either an import license or an importer’s statement lodged through the new ICG electronic portal, backed up by proof of lawful export.
Ukraine, an EU candidate since June 2022, needs to align its laws and practices with the EU. Draft amendments that cleared first reading in the Verkhovna Rada last autumn would ban all private circulation of archaeological material, raise maximum penalties, and define “archaeology” in line with the EU’s 2014 Directive on the Return of Cultural Objects. The bill also contemplates a dedicated investigative body, possibly within the Security Service (SBU), to mirror cross-border competences the police lack.
With the Financial Times recently warning that the new EU rules could up-end the antiquities market and push artefacts further underground unless source countries tighten domestic enforcement, Ukrainian officials are keen to present successes that demonstrate effective control of cultural property, and the work of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine is currently a key aspect of that.
Levada’s model works because it connects scholarship, public engagement and multi-agency cooperation. Complaints go straight to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, which assigns the appropriate enforcement service, whether it is National Police, SBU, the Economic Security Bureau or, when cross-border smuggling is suspected, customs. The museum’s experts then can act as approved specialists, an unpaid but crucial role that keeps investigations moving.
Public outreach is equally important. In the summer of 2023, the museum’s “The Saved Treasures” exhibition displayed 2,000 seized objects laid out in forensic trays, each labelled with the pending case number. Visitors learned not only the artefacts’ historical context but also the criminal penalties for looting them.
Despite successes, the initiative still runs on a shoestring, as even artefacts occasionally have to be rescued by donor-funded ransom purchases, when a unique piece surfaces that the police cannot intercept in time.
While Kyiv legislates and Levada’s team plugs away, the number of Ukrainian artefacts seized in the EU is already rising, as archaeological reports indicate.
With every bucket of fibulae intercepted, every hoard documented, Kyiv’s message that it is a trustworthy guardian of Europe’s shared heritage is reinforced.
Max Levada’s night-owl archaeologists have provided the template. Now lawmakers in Kyiv and officials in Brussels must match that energy, because once a coin or sword slips into the underground, it rarely finds its way home.