Aleksandr Butyagin

Alexander Mikhailovich Butyagin (; born October 12, 1971) is a Russian archaeologist and classical scholar, a Candidate of Historical Sciences, and a science communicator. He is the head of the Sector of Archaeology of the Northern Black Sea region in the Department of the Ancient World at the State Hermitage Museum. Since 1999, Together with the Saint Petersburg "'s House of Culture", he organized author-led tours of the Hermitage and lecture meetings.

In 2024–25, he acted as curator of the Hermitage exhibition "Look into the Eyes of Monsters": Mythical embodiments of terror in Antiquity and their victors.

Myrmekion Archaeological Expedition The ancient Greek settlement site of Myrmekion at Cape Karantynny. Photograph, 2007.

Since 1999, Butyagin has led the Myrmekion Archaeological Expedition. Over the course of its work, the expedition uncovered buildings from the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greek history and from the Roman period; it also investigated a later medieval necropolis dated to the 13th–14th centuries.

In 2002, Butyagin's expedition found the hoard of 723 bronze coins of Panticapaeum (3rd century BCE), and in 2003 it found the from Cyzicus. In 2006, the Hermitage organized an exhibition entitled Myrmekion, which displayed some of the finds. A catalogue entitled Myrmekion in the light of the latest archaeological research was published for the exhibition; in a joint article with historian , the archaeology of Myrmekion was described in detail.

The fieldwork begun in 1999 continued after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. Ukraine considers all excavations conducted in Crimea from 2014 onward to be unlawful, including those carried out by local Crimean archaeologists, if they were not authorized by an official Ukrainian permit under the applicable Ukrainian legal regime. The accusations were based on the international cultural heritage law that prohibits any archaeological excavations on occupied territories unless explicitly authorized and permitted by the internationally recognized authorities.

According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, Russia had violated said law by excavating, 'renovating', and causing other irreparable damage to places of Crimean Tatar or Ukrainian cultural heritage in Crimea, such as Bakhchysarai Palace or the Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora. In March 2025, Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) stated that "hundreds of archaeological artifacts discovered during excavations" had been removed from Crimea, including from the ancient city of Panticapaeum, where Butyagin also carried out archaeological work. The claim that the finds were not removed from Crimea for permanent storage was also mentioned in Meduza's reporting on Butyagin's arrest, citing historian and journalist Arseny Vesnin. According to information cited from Butyagin's colleagues, Ukrainian authorities opened criminal cases against all archaeologists who worked in Crimea after Russia's annexation of the peninsula. (this institution brings together a number of museums and archaeological sites in Kerch, including the archaeological site of the Myrmekion settlement) After his detention, a number of Russian opposition figures voiced support for Butyagin, including the historian and journalist Arseny Vesnin and the former Russian media manager Demyan Kudryavtsev.

Against the backdrop of Butyagin's arrest, Russia's Ministry of Education and Science recommended that universities and research institutes coordinate all foreign business trips to unfriendly countries in advance.

In March 2026, Butyagin was ordered by the Warsaw District Court to be extradited to Ukraine to stand trial. On April 28, Butyagin was released as part of a prisoner exchange between Poland and Belarus.