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Scythian Gold, Crimean Treasures

Updated

An appeals court in the Netherlands has ruled that Ukraine has legal control over a trove of ancient artifacts from Crimea that was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia seized the peninsula in 2014.

The items, known as the Scythian Gold, are in the Netherlands because they were borrowed from four museums in Crimea and one in Kyiv for an exhibition in early 2014 at Amsterdam's Allard Pierson Museum.

They were sent before Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum dismissed as illegitimate by the UN General Assembly.

The ruling on October 26, 2021, came five years after a Dutch court had said the treasures should be sent back to Ukraine. The Crimean museums, however, had lodged a joint appeal against that decision.


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