With regard to the information being circulated in Ukrainian mass media and global social networks about the Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia exhibition, we need to state that, in order to draw the attention of the British Museum to potential attempts by the Russian Federation to include into the exposition Crimean cultural values, H.E. Natalia Galibarenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to the UK, raised the issue in a September 13, 2017 letter to the museum, later receiving an official response.
According to the letter from the Museum, the majority of the objects exhibited are artefacts from the Hermitage Museum excavated in the northern Black Sea area and Caucasus in the 18th and 19th centuries, which have been in the Hermitage since then, as well as pieces from the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The British Museum Director Hartwig Fischer reassures that the British Museum adheres to very strict guidelines over provenance and due diligence, and that there is no controversy over the discovery of any of these pieces, most of which have been publicly exhibited in the past.