In accordance with the court’s decision, the collection detained in the Netherlands should be transferred to Ukraine
Vladimir Zelensky
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy on his Twitter page called the court’s decision in Amsterdam to return Scythian gold to his country fair.
“A long-awaited victory in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. Scythian gold will return to Ukraine. I am grateful to the court for a fair decision. We always get our own back. First we will return the Scythian gold, and then the Crimea,” wrote the head of the Ukrainian state.
On Tuesday, it became known that the court in Amsterdam decided to transfer to Kiev the Scythian gold collection of 2 thousand items, which before the annexation of Crimea to Russia was stored in four museums of the peninsula. In February 2014, the exhibits were sent for exhibition to a museum in the Netherlands. After the referendum on the entry of Crimea into Russia, Ukraine declared its rights to the collection.
In December 2016, the Amsterdam court ruled that all the exhibits should be transferred to Ukraine, and not returned to the collections of museums. The court justified the decision by saying that Crimea is not a state and cannot assign the status of cultural heritage to gold.
In 2017, the Crimean authorities appealed the decision, calling the verdict “political”. The Amsterdam court repeatedly postponed the case, but eventually postponed the decision to October 26.
The Kremlin has repeatedly stated its desire to return the collection to Russia, while emphasizing that lawyers should deal with this case. The press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the latest decision of the Amsterdam court.
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