Leyla Ibragimova, director of the Melitopol Local History Museum, was one of those abducted by Russian troops in March. She told the New York Times how the Russians, along with a man in a white lab coat, tried at gunpoint to force her to lead them to a museum treasury of Scythian gold that had been hidden for safekeeping..

Other historical artifacts were also hidden in the basement in boxes, museum workers assumed that no one would find them there.. They refused to show the location of the antiquities, but the occupiers found them anyway. The curator, identified by Crimean Tatar activist Eskender Bariev as Galina Kucher, was released but kidnapped again and has not been seen since, The Art Newspaper writes..

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Ibragimova and Kucher spoke proudly about the Scythian gold collection when it was exhibited in 2017 and 2021:

“For the first time, what was found on the territory of Ukraine remained in Ukraine,” Ibragimova said of the gold items found during the archaeological excavations of the barrows in Melitopol. “Before that, everyone was sent to Moscow or Leningrad”.

Recall, last week it was also reported that among the stolen museum masterpieces were the original works of Arkhip Kuindzhi, an artist of Greek origin, born in Mariupol in the 19th century. The Mariupol City Council reported that "