SIMFEROPOL, January 19. /TASS/. A disputed Crimean museum collection of Scythian gold that a Dutch court awarded to Ukraine has an approximate insurance value of 1.4 mln euros, State Council of Crimea Chairman Vladimir Konstantinov said on his Telegram channel.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands upheld a lower court ruling by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordering that the Scythian gold collection be handed over to Ukraine. On December 27, 2023, the Ukrainian customs authority said that the Scythian gold had been transported to Kiev and procedures for clearing it through customs had begun. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia’s position that the collection of priceless artifacts belongs to Crimea and must be kept in the Crimean museums that had originally loaned them in 2014 to a Dutch museum for an exhibit.

"Everything plundered from our people during centuries of interaction with ‘civilized’ Europe must be returned. What cannot be returned - it should be compensated for by equivalent values confiscated from the plunderers and vandals. This pertains to exhibits of four Crimean museums - the [so-called] Scythian gold collection - 2,111 stored items in total, stolen from us by the West’s proxy state, Ukraine, with the complicity of the Netherlands. They are beyond any price for us, while their provisional insurance amount totals 1.4 mln euros," Konstantinov said.

The Scythian gold consists of a collection containing more than 2,000 individual items that were placed on loan by their Crimean museum curators for an exhibition that was staged from February to August 2014 by the Allard Pierson Museum, the archeological museum of the University of Amsterdam. The uncertainty and legal dispute over ownership and possession of the priceless artifacts arose after the reunification of Crimea with Russia in March 2014. Both the Crimean museums and the Ukrainian government claimed legal title to the exhibits. In light of the ownership dispute, the University of Amsterdam suspended the transfer of the valuables until the parties reached an agreement or the matter was resolved through adjudication.