Ukraine’s Newest Weapons Shipment Is From 300 B.C.

On Friday morning, three swords that looked to have spent a good bit of their lives underground were laid carefully on a green cloth draped over a table at the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. For more than a year now, Washington has been singularly preoccupied with getting weapons to Ukraine. So when an invitation arrived from the Ukrainian Embassy to a repatriation ceremony for a stone axe and three swords, I was naturally intrigued.

The weapons presented at the embassy were purloined artifacts sent from Russia, seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport. Experts from the Institute of Archaeology at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences have dated the swords to the fifth or sixth century B.C. and the polished flint axe head to the third century B.C. All have been deemed to hail from territory belonging to present-day Ukraine, according to a handout shared by the embassy.

Five CBP officers in full uniform milled around with a small handful of reporters, many of whom worked for Ukrainian outlets. There was surprisingly little standing in the way of the priceless artifacts and the room full of journalists. A CBP evidence bag, the temporary home of the seized axe head, sat empty in a side room on a chair with a black pea coat—possibly belonging to one of the reporters—thrown over it.

On Friday morning, three swords that looked to have spent a good bit of their lives underground were laid carefully on a green cloth draped over a table at the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. For more than a year now, Washington has been singularly preoccupied with getting weapons to Ukraine. So when an invitation arrived from the Ukrainian Embassy to a repatriation ceremony for a stone axe and three swords, I was naturally intrigued.

The weapons presented at the embassy were purloined artifacts sent from Russia, seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport. Experts from the Institute of Archaeology at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences have dated the swords to the fifth or sixth century B.C. and the polished flint axe head to the third century B.C. All have been deemed to hail from territory belonging to present-day Ukraine, according to a handout shared by the embassy.

Five CBP officers in full uniform milled around with a small handful of reporters, many of whom worked for Ukrainian outlets. There was surprisingly little standing in the way of the priceless artifacts and the room full of journalists. A CBP evidence bag, the temporary home of the seized axe head, sat empty in a side room on a chair with a black pea coat—possibly belonging to one of the reporters—thrown over it.

More than a million pieces of mail come in through that airport every day, Frank Russo, CBP’s director of field operations for New York, explained in opening remarks. “Finding the needle in the haystack, finding these items, is not easy,” he added, attributing the successful operation to the agency’s collaboration with the National Targeting Center as well as U.S. Homeland Security investigations.

The importer is someone known to the government “who looks to do this on a recurring basis,” Russo said. Are they a Russian national? He couldn’t say, but he added that they were “from that area, for sure.” My interest piqued but remained unsatisfied. Little else was offered regarding this apparent black market of ancient Ukrainian artifacts.

The seized items arrayed at the Ukrainian Embassy on Friday are just the first to have been identified from more than 20 packages originating with the same sender in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region, which abuts the Crimean Peninsula, according to a Ukrainian diplomat who asked to remain anonymous. All had been intercepted by CBP at JFK and Newark airports between July and September of last year, they said, and the work is ongoing to clarify whether they originate from Ukraine. Like a lot else about this case, it’s as yet unclear whether the items were seized during the current war or where they were taken from.

Remarks by Oksana Markarova, Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, set the importance of the discoveries in context of the current war. “We know this fight of course is about our territorial integrity and sovereignty. We know this fight is about our democracy and our freedom,” Markarova said. “But it is also a fight about our cultural identity.”

As Russia has waged war on Ukraine in a bid to kneecap the country’s independence, its troops have looted museums, art galleries, and cathedrals in occupied areas. Some experts have described it as the single biggest heist since the Nazis plundered Europe during World War II. At least 10,000 artworks are estimated to have been taken from the Kherson Regional Art Museum during the occupation of the city, according to Human Rights Watch, which has described the looting as a potential war crime.

“The Ukrainians who held these swords many centuries ago were fighting probably for their homes, as we fight now,” Markarova said.

The well-traveled swords and axe head will now be returned to Ukraine, where the country’s ministries of culture and foreign affairs will decide what to do with them next, Markarova said. Asked by a Ukrainian reporter how the ancient artifacts will be safely transported into an active war zone, Markarova noted that heads of state, including U.S. President Joe Biden, had successfully made the trip into the country unscathed. “We are positive that together—with the team here but also our brave defenders and our border control people—we will find ways how to securely get them home,” she said.

After a brief signing ceremony handing over custody of the items to Ukraine, Markarova posed for a photograph with two women CBP officers next to the display table. “The girls with the swords,” she joked.