SIMFEROPOL, April 28. /TASS/. A Russian expert has slammed Poland for arresting Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin and keeping him in custody for a swap as a de facto legalized hostage taking.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said earlier that Butyagin had been released as part of a detainee exchange that took place on the Belarusian-Polish border. His release was made possible thanks to a multi-stage joint operation with Belarus’ security service, it said. According to the BelTA news agency, the five-for-five exchange involved citizens of Russia, Belarus, and other CIS countries.

"This is a story of how people are taken hostage to be later exchanged. As a matter of fact, what has been done by the Polish and Ukrainians is a legalized hostage taking. There is nothing positive about this," Andrey Malygin, director of Crimea’s Tavrida Museum, told TASS.

Alexander Butyagin, who heads the North Black Sea region sector at the Ancient World department of the world-famous Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and heads the museum’s Kerch expedition, was detained in Poland on December 4, 2025, when he was on his way from the Netherlands to the Balkans. A court in Warsaw ruled to place him in custody, extending his arrest until June 1. According to the Polish prosecutor’s office, which received an extradition request from Kiev for Butyagin, he could have faced up to ten years in prison in Ukraine. A Warsaw court of the first instance ruled to extradite him to Ukraine. His lawyers, however, challenged the ruling.

In November 2024, Ukraine’s authorities brought charges in absentia against a Russian archaeologist for engaging in allegedly illegal excavations in Crimea. Although his name was not announced publicly, the Ukrainian media said that it was Butyagin.