The Polish authorities refused to extradite Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin to Ukraine, despite a request from Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. Butyagin, who is accused of illegal archaeological excavations in the occupied territory of Crimea, was included in the list of individuals for exchange that took place between Poland, Belarus, and Moldova.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Exchange at the Belarusian-Polish border and its participants
The decision not to extradite Butyagin was confirmed by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. He noted that the archaeologist was one of the individuals exchanged during the operation in a “five-for-five” format, conducted on April 28 at the border between Poland and Belarus. According to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Butyagin and the wife of a Russian military officer serving in the peacekeeping contingent in Transnistria were exchanged for two officers of the Moldovan special services, detained in June 2025.
Among the other participants in the exchange, Belarusian-Polish journalist Andrzej Poczobut deserves special attention, as he has been in a Belarusian prison since March 2021. In February 2023, he was sentenced to eight years in a high-security colony on charges of “inciting hatred” and “calling for sanctions.” Poczobut had long worked with the Polish publication Gazeta Wyborcza and actively covered events in Belarus. His detention became one of the reasons for the tension in relations between Warsaw and Minsk in recent years.
Legal situation regarding Butyagin and reactions from the parties
In March, the Warsaw District Court agreed to extradite Butyagin to Ukraine at the request of the Ukrainian side. The Russian archaeologist was detained in Warsaw back in December 2025, when he was in Poland in transit from the Netherlands, giving lectures in various European countries. The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office suspects him of partially destroying a cultural heritage site and causing damages of over 201.6 million hryvnias (equivalent to 4.8 million dollars). For these charges, Butyagin faces up to five years in prison.
“One of the people we exchanged is a Russian historian who was in the process of being extradited to Ukraine.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation protested to the Polish ambassador regarding the scientist’s detention, stating that the accusations from the Ukrainian side are “absurd,” and that Butyagin is a “world-renowned archaeologist” who has been conducting research on the Kerch Peninsula for many years.
Alexander Butyagin heads the sector of ancient archaeology of the Northern Black Sea region in the Department of Antiquity of the Hermitage and has been leading the work of the Myrmecian archaeological expedition, which studies the ancient settlement of Myrmecium in Kerch, since 1999. The criminal case against the archaeologist is related to his participation in excavations in Crimea after the peninsula was occupied by Russia in 2014. The Ukrainian authorities consider these excavations illegal due to the lack of permission from Kyiv.