On April 7, Kyiv Customs, the Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv, and the National Military History Museum presented 469 items of numismatics, phaleristics, bladed weapons, and military equipment ranging from the Bronze Age to the 19th century, which were saved by Kyiv Customs from illegal export out of Ukraine.
Researchers from the Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv and the National Military History Museum conducted an expert examination of the valuables seized by Kyiv customs officers and identified extremely rare specimens, including a socketed axe (13th–12th centuries BC), numismatic groups of Roman and Polish coins, Scythian arrowheads, a mirror (4th century BC), as well as rare spearheads of the Komariv culture (15th–13th centuries BC) and the Sabatynivka culture (13th century BC).
All of these valuable artefacts were attempted to be illegally exported abroad by citizens in international postal shipments.
What Ukrainian scholarship and history—and, accordingly, all Ukrainians—lose as a result of the predatory treatment of cultural values was explained by Oleksandr Pashkovskyi, Deputy Director General for Research at the Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv:
“The main thing we would like to emphasize is the value of the presented items. For archaeologists and historians who study and write our past, these items, saved by Kyiv Customs, paradoxically are lost forever. If an archaeologist had discovered, for example, a socketed axe during research in a cultural layer, he would most likely be able to determine the exact dating, origin, the circumstances under which it was lost or buried, its affiliation with a particular archaeological culture, and thus the level of development of cultural and economic connections of a specific community. But this is something we will no longer be able to learn.”