SIMFEROPOL, June 9. /TASS/. The ruling by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands to hand over the Scythian gold collection from Crimean museums to Ukraine gives grounds for worries about its safety as the only thing the Kiev regime wants is to do harm to Russia, Crimea’s envoy at the Russian president Grigory Muradov told TASS on Friday.

"I think that the Kiev regime in its today’s form is only capable of harming Russia and creating various problems because it is an instrument of the Western policy. The more we are robbed, the happier the West is - this is what the Kiev regime is meant for now. I am afraid for the safety of this gold because their [Ukraine's] task will not be to preserve it. Their task will be to embezzle it somehow. <…> From the political point of view, it is yet another West’s provocation. It is meant to add oil to the fire and it motivates us to settle the issue with Kiev, where the priceless Crimean heritage is to be taken, radically," Muradov stressed.

He did not rule out however that the collection could be transferred to Ukraine after its political regime is changed. "The goals set by the Russian president envisage that the regime in Kiev must be denazified. At least, it should be neutral, or better, friendly to Russia. And if in such a case anything is handed over to the Kiev authorities, I think they would be ready to return all our exhibits to Crimean museums. <…> But so far, we have to state that the Dutch court’s decision has an extremely negative, politicized and ungrounded nature," he added.

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands said on Friday that it had upheld the verdict of the Amsterdam Appellate Court demanding that the Scythian gold collection be transferred to Ukraine.

The Scythian Gold is a collection of more than 2,000 items that were put on display at an exhibition at the Allard Pierson Museum of the University of Amsterdam in February 2014 when Crimea was still part of Ukraine. Uncertainty over the collection's future emerged when Crimea reunited with Russia in March 2014. Crimea’s museums and Ukraine both laid claim to the collection. The University of Amsterdam, which oversees the Allard Pierson Museum's activities, put the handover procedure on hold until either the dispute was legally resolved or the parties came to terms.