‘Propaganda uses me now in both directions,’ says Russian archaeologist freed in prisoner exchange

Alexander Butyagin, a St. Petersburg archaeologist and Hermitage Museum researcher, was arrested in Warsaw in late 2025. He was detained at Ukraine’s request, which alleges that after 2014 he conducted illegal excavations in Crimea and destroyed a cultural heritage site. In April, the archaeologist was returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange. A few days after his release, Butyagin, who does not consider his work a crime, said he would soon return to Crimea. In a new interview — this time with Kommersant — Butyagin described how he was arrested and exchanged, and responded to colleagues who had criticized his work in Crimea after 2014. He also spoke about politics and about how both Russian and Ukrainian propaganda now use him for their own purposes. We have selected the key quotes from the interview.

On the arrest

I suspected something like this could happen. But I had already traveled to Europe twice before without incident, so I assumed Europe wouldn’t play that game. I didn’t know that each European country makes that decision independently. That was my mistake. I thought the European community wouldn’t want to get drawn into a hunt for humanities scholars — but it turned out that some countries, like Poland, were happy to join in.

On the exchange

I first heard about it through a rumor from Hermitage colleagues. About a week later, my defense attorney came and said there was such an option. […] The defense attorney asked me not to tell anyone, and I didn’t. I signed the documents. The next day he came again and told me everything was going smoothly and that, according to his information, it would all be over by the end of the month. There were three days left until the end of the month. […] In the morning they took me to the exchange. […]

I was disappointed, of course, that there was no bridge, like in the film Myortviy Sezon “Dead Season.” But otherwise everything went roughly like that. The Poles drove me in a mask and handcuffs, though it’s unclear why. As they explained to me, it was for my own safety. Then they released me at the border crossing […]. And then we were led to the border, the accused was brought from the other side, and we crossed over with our things. I was greeted by a person on behalf of the president of Belarus, taken into a building, and left alone to sit in a room and collect myself.

On criticism from colleagues over excavations in Crimea after 2014

That’s their personal choice — let them live with it. You see, there can be no crime in scientific work. It’s very easy to be pure and righteous when you’re sitting in Europe and looking down from on high. An archaeological site is not to blame for the fact that people are fighting around it or that it has passed into someone else’s hands.

On support from colleagues

People with completely different views wrote to me — even I found that surprising. After all, I am a small person, known in certain circles. Nevertheless, many people helped. The Russian community as a whole spoke out, naturally, very powerfully at many different levels. I was very much sympathized with by the Polish interpreter who appeared at the very first stage, when I had only just been arrested. […]

Among those who wrote were Russian scholars living in Europe, and European scholars with whom we are not personally acquainted. I know that Italian scholars wrote a collective letter as a group; there were also private letters, and so on.

On archaeology and politics

Politics is a shifting thing — why should the study of an interesting site depend on it? I don’t understand that. My task as a scholar is to study the site that I love, that I know, and that I have worked on since childhood. And I try to do that whenever I have the opportunity. […]

Any propaganda now uses me in both directions. On the one hand — as a terrible looter and destroyer of sites, on the other — as a hero. But I am simply a scholar who has spent his whole life wanting to study his site.