MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and France dismissed a request from the Kiev authorities to detain Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin, recognizing the absurdity of the claims against him, while Poland "chose otherwise," Russian Charge d’Affaires in Poland Andrey Ordash said in an interview with TASS.

The diplomat recalled that Russian archaeologist and State Hermitage Museum employee Alexander Butyagin was detained on December 4, 2025, at a hotel in Warsaw, where he had arrived to deliver a lecture "on a completely neutral topic unrelated to politics." "The basis for these actions by the Polish side was a request from the Kiev regime, which brought entirely fabricated accusations against our archaeologist: alleged participation in illegal archaeological research in the territory of the Republic of Crimea and supposedly causing damage to cultural heritage. At the same time, in the Netherlands, France, and the Czech Republic, where Butyagin had spoken before arriving in Poland, the Ukrainian request was ignored, apparently acknowledging the absurdity of the claims made against the scholar," he said. "In Warsaw, however, they thought otherwise."

According to him, "it turns out that, at Kiev’s prompting, the Polish authorities are accusing Butyagin of carrying out his professional activities." "His detention at the hotel was turned into a show: for some reason, it required the involvement of officers from Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW), which performs counterintelligence functions," Ordash added.