The director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First European Department, Artyom Studennikov, has said that the Russian side admits that the decision to hand over Scythian gold to the Kiev authorities will lead to its loss.
He said this in an interview with RIA Novosti.
According to him, there are already precedents that allow making relevant assumptions, for example, the removal of icons from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is already recorded, and objects from Ukrainian museums are moved allegedly for storage in museums of a number of European countries.
“That is why we have every reason to assume that Crimean artefacts may suffer a sad fate – we cannot rule out that they may be lost,” he said.
Earlier, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova called the situation with the transfer of Scythian gold to the Kiev authorities a theft.
In November 2023, the Allard Pearson Museum in Amsterdam confirmed the transfer of the Scythian gold collection to Ukraine.