Ukraine has won a court case in the Netherlands over a collection of more than 500 items of ancient Scythian gold, kept in the Netherlands since 2014, which were lent to the country by museums in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
The gold should be returned to Kyiv, according to a posting on the District Court of Amsterdam’s website published on Dec.14.
Ukraine will have to pay 111,000 euros in compensation to Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum for keeping the collection for more than two years, the court also ruled.
The Crimean museums have three months to file an appeal. Should the appeal fail, Ukraine plans to return the collection to the Museum of National History of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Yevhen Nishchuk, Ukraine’s Culture Minister, praised the Dutch court’s decision in a posting on Facebook on Dec.14.
“There is justice in the world,” Nishchuk wrote.
Nishchuk’s first deputy, SvitlanaFomenko, said in a press release that the court had based its decision on the international UNESCO convention of 1970. According to it, Ukraine is responsible for the transportation of its own cultural heritage.
The fourth-century Scythian gold collection, which has a total value of 1.5 million euros, was sent out of Ukraine by four Crimean Museums in early February 2014, almost a month before Russian forces invaded the peninsula.The exhibition, entitled “Crimea, the Golden Island in the Black Sea” was to tour Germany and the Netherlands.
But by the time the exhibition tour had ended, the peninsula had already been occupied. Ukraine started fighting with Russia for ownership of the gold in the Dutch courts.
Ukraine claimed the collection should be returned to Kyiv because it is a national treasure. But the Dutch side refused to fulfill the Ukrainian demands, as the Crimean museums had filed a counter-claim.
Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian authorities have removed a range precious items from various museums in Crimea. In July 2016, a collection of 38 paintings by Russian artist Ivan Aivasovskywere taken from Crimea’sFeodosia Gallery to Moscow, where the Russian authorities said they would be kept until the 200th anniversary of the artist’s birth – July 17, 2017. After that, the paintings are supposed to be returned to Crimea, Russian Ria Novosti reported in July.
In December 2016 Vladyslav Pioro, the head of the Ukrainian Museums Development Center, told news website LB.UA that due to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, Ukraine has lost control over more than a million museum pieces.
