Poland has released Russian archaeologist Dmitry Butyagin. What you need to know
Dmitry Butyagin, an employee of the Hermitage Museum, an expert in ancient archaeology and a popularizer of science, who was detained by Warsaw at the request of Ukraine, was released from prison on April 28 as part of an exchange with Belarus and handed over to the Minsk authorities. The detention of the Russian scientist was widely discussed not only in Russia, but also in neighboring countries. What is known about the Dmitry Butyagin case is in the Izvestia article.
Accusation
• As the head of the Northern Black Sea Region sector in the Department of the Ancient World of the Hermitage Museum, Dmitry Butyagin conducted excavations of the ancient settlement of Myrmekiy on the territory of Crimea. All excavations were carried out after receiving official permission: before Crimea joined Russia in 2014, such permits were issued by Ukraine, and after Russia. From Kiev's point of view, the scientist's fault was that after 2014 he continued excavations in Crimea without Ukraine's consent.
• Kiev put Butyagin on the wanted list in 2024. Carrying out excavations on the peninsula without Kiev's consent is not a serious offense, even in Ukraine — there is only a fine for it. But the Kiev authorities decided to bring a more serious charge against the scientist: "deliberate illegal partial destruction of an object of cultural heritage of national significance" in 2014-2019. This formulation provided grounds for imprisonment, and as a result, for the requirement of extradition.
Detention
• On December 4, 2025, Butyagin was detained in Poland, where he was supposed to give a lecture on Pompeii. Before that, the scientist successfully held lectures in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, despite the fact that Ukraine has already issued an arrest warrant for him. On March 18, the Polish court of first instance approved Kiev's request for Butyagin's extradition to Ukraine. Russia called this a "pro-Ukrainian" decision by Poland's political leadership.
Vladimir Putin
As for the scientist who was engaged in excavations in the Crimea. In my opinion, he was engaged in Soviet times and when Crimea was already part of Ukraine, and recently he has been engaged (in excavations). He didn't change anything, he always had everything according to agreements with the authorities. What's happening to him now underscores who we're dealing with.
• Ukraine celebrated the Polish court's decision as a precedent. In fact, Kiev has succeeded for the first time in extraditing Russian citizens to Ukraine — previously such requests were rejected with reference to the European Convention on Human Rights. In June 2025, Ukraine's demand for the extradition of a Russian citizen, whom Kiev suspected of espionage, was rejected by the Danish Supreme Court.
• Butyagin's defense pointed to the lack of evidence of a crime in the case: destruction and the amount of damage. Kiev based its accusations only on the examination of satellite images that showed a change in the landscape. The experts were only able to confirm that the scientist was conducting excavations. In addition, the defense referred to the expiration of the statute of limitations in the case: according to Ukrainian laws, it should have been terminated before August 2024.
• The judge did not take into account the arguments of the defense and called the documents submitted by Ukraine "complete and clear." The court also accused the archaeologist of violating the Hague Convention, although at that time neither Russia nor Ukraine were parties to the second protocol of the convention, on which the charges were based. The final decision on extradition remained with the Polish Ministry of Justice.
• In order to extradite a scientist to Kiev, punishment for the crime imputed to him should have existed both in Ukraine and in Poland, but there is no such provision in Polish criminal law, so they could try to qualify his work as looting and vandalism — the only article even slightly suitable for Kiev's accusations.
Liberation
• On April 28, the Polish Foreign Ministry announced that the Russian scientist had been handed over to the Belarusian side as part of a prisoner exchange. The FSB Central Control Center of Russia stated that an archaeologist and the wife of a Russian serviceman in Transnistria were exchanged for two officers of the Moldovan special services. Dmitry Butyagin returned to Russia: he spent less than five months in prison. The case of the archaeologist once again demonstrated the bias of the Polish authorities against Russian citizens.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
