Russia hopes Netherlands will return over 2,000 items of Scythian gold collection to Crimea

The Kremlin hopes that the court case in the Netherlands about the return of the collection of Scythian gold to the Crimea will have a positive outcome for Russia, Kremlin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday, September 13, RIA Novosti reports. 

“This is a very complicated question, we would certainly like to see our exhibits returned home,” he said.

According to Peskov, it is not the presidential administration, but lawyers cooperating with the Ministry of Culture who supervise the process. 

The dispute over the exhibits between Kiev and Simferopol began in 2014, after Crimea became part of Russia. The exhibition titled "Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea" was held at the Allard Pearson Museum in the Netherlands at the time when Crimea reunited with the Russian Federation. The collection, which was presented for the exhibition, contains 2,000 artefacts. Since then, the parties to the dispute try to decide to which country the items should be returned and the EU still considers Crimea to be part of Ukraine.

Four Crimean museums filed a class action lawsuit against the Allard Pearson Museum at a court in Amsterdam, in which they demanded the obligations under the contracts signed with Crimean museums should be fulfilled and the collection of Scythian gold be returned from the Netherlands to Crimean museums.

Russian Minister for Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, said that the Amsterdam court should be guided by international law when studying the question of the ownership of the collection. Vladimir Medinsky said that Russia could break off inter-museum relations with Holland should the Amsterdam court decide not to return the collection of Scythian gold to Crimea.