Gleb Bogush says it is primarily the Russian state and its officials that are responsible for Crimean excavations, rather than Butyagin, because it was not up to archaeologists to decide whether the Hermitage expedition should continue.
A senior Hermitage employee told the BBC that “a field archaeologist cannot be a citizen of the world; he deals with officials, obtaining permits and has to look for funding and volunteers”.
Butyagin has attracted support not just from the Kremlin but from Russians who oppose Putin and the war.
“The claims being made against him are absurd,” said Arseny Vesnin, an exiled journalist and historian. He said Butyagin had ensured conservation and preservation of the site he was excavating.
Others maintain that artefacts would have been looted by criminals and sold on the black market if Russian archaeologists had refused to work in Crimea.
That does not justify their actions, says Samuel Andrew Hardy, a leading British criminologist specialising in the protection of cultural property in conflict zones.
Official excavations do not always stop criminal digs from taking place, he argues. Some looters target sites that have already been excavated.
Hardy says all that Butyagin’s supporters are doing is arguing that ultimately Russia should just be allowed to carry on doing what it wants regardless of the war.