The Taurians and Cimmerians, Scythians and Greeks, Crimean Tatars and Italians - each of the peoples who inhabited the Crimean peninsula at different times left behind many monuments and artifacts. That is why Crimea has long been considered a mecca for archaeologists. But over the past ten years, scientists have not been welcome here: the transformation of the peninsula into a giant military base requires appropriate infrastructure, so roads are being built right through the sites of primitive people, through Scythian mounds, and on top of ancient manors. Where do the artifacts found by the occupiers go? Let's try to find out.

Heavy construction equipment between the Tavrida highway and Sudak, with which it was decided to connect, works almost continuously. At least three archaeological sites are located on the 29 kilometers of road works. One of them, a Taurian settlement that is about 2,500 years old, has already been devastated. According to the archaeologists, “there is a pit on the territory, which was probably formed during the operation of earthmoving equipment during the construction of the road in modern times.”

In fact, the monument was simply destroyed, and the archaeological artifacts of the Kizil-Kobyn Bronze Age along with the soil were used to level the relief at the road construction site. Another ancient settlement is planned to be “saved” by excavating it before graders and bulldozers pass through. The third is to be “preserved,” whatever that means. CEMAAT's interlocutor, a Crimean archaeologist familiar with the practice of conducting historical and cultural examinations in the occupied territory, is sure that there will be no guarantees of preservation of the “canned food”. “The pits can be drilled in different ways - to find something for sure, or vice versa, to find nothing with the maximum probability. That's why the boundaries of the protected areas can vary greatly. This was done repeatedly during the construction of Tavrida. The one million artifacts that were found is simply the minimum that could not be ignored. There are at least as many left under the asphalt,” the scientist says.

A million finds is not an exaggeration. Although the exact or at least approximate figures have not been announced anywhere, Russian propagandists have stated that archaeologists have found more than a million artifacts near the Kerch Bridge and in its waters alone, of which about 100,000 are of scientific value. During the first year of surveying the three hundred kilometers of the future highway, Russian diggers pulled about 80,000 historical artifacts out of the ground, some of which were in use tens of thousands of years ago.

As Ukrainian archaeologists explain, the colossal number of discoveries is not due to the professionalism or technical equipment of the expeditions. “The designers of the Tavrida highway studied the relief of the Crimea well and determined that the flattest place to build a road is the outer depression in front of the Crimean Mountains, which is where the route was laid... The fact is that some Moscow institute was not the discoverer of this road; it was first discovered at least in the Eneolithic period, and probably much earlier. It was along this route that the oldest burial mounds and ground burial grounds were built,” reveals the secret of the ‘success of Russian science’ Evelina Kravchenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

According to both Ukrainian archaeologists and those involved in the excavations before the construction of the Tavrida, Russian diggers did not have time to conduct full-fledged research along the entire length of the highway. The construction of the highway was already behind schedule, and the issue was of great political and propaganda importance to the occupiers, so there was no reason to count on any delays for more detailed excavations. Moreover, the scope of work on more than a hundred sites simultaneously turned out to be so large that archaeologists had to be brought in from Siberia and Tatarstan, as well as several commercial archaeological organizations from the Krasnodar Territory.

“The whole problem is not even how many layers are left uncovered and how many artifacts are left under the asphalt. The problem is the destruction of unique monuments - tombstones, fortifications, various buildings. In short, those objects that give historians a clear picture of many processes. And now scientists will build their hypotheses only on the basis of descriptions, drawings, and photographs. It's as if the Egyptian civilization was judged by photos of the pyramids, because they were “shaved off” for the construction of a road,” the Crimean archaeologist complains.

The Ukrainian scientific community sadly states that the damage done to the historical and cultural heritage of Crimea is irreparable. “The monuments destroyed during construction cannot be restored. They can no longer be considered monuments, as they are covered with asphalt and are used as a highway,” says Daria Pidhirna, an expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights.

“Today, the scientific community does not know not only how many and what kind of artifacts have been found under Tavrida, but also where they are stored. The Russian authorities have repeatedly declared that everything will remain in the museums of Crimea, but museum workers deny this. “Not all of the collections, having been registered on the peninsula, remain here - a significant number have either already been taken to Russian museums for exhibitions or research, or are in the preparatory stage of 'moving,'” says one of the employees of the East Crimean Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve.

So far, none of the Russians and collaborators involved in the large-scale destruction of Crimean historical heritage have been held accountable. Prior to the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office was investigating about 70 criminal cases on the facts of illegal excavations and damage to cultural heritage sites. At the same time, for example, Mikhail Piotrovsky, the head of the Hermitage, one of the most involved in the destructive processes, was included in the sanctions lists only in Ukraine and Canada. But for the rest of the world, he and thousands of other Russian “diggers” still remain part of civilized society, figures of great culture, descendants of Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky.