The ancient city of Tauric Chersonese was established by Greek colonists more than two and a half thousand years ago, in the VI century BC, in the southwest of the Crimean Peninsula.

Chersonesos was the local center of the Hellenic civilization that emerged in the Northern Prychornomoria and held important trading positions on the Black Sea. During the period of the Byzantine Empire, the city remained an important administrative and commercial center, and it also became the center of Christianity in the south of Crimea.

On June 23, 2013, at the 37th session of the World Heritage Committee of  UNESCO,Tauric Chersonese and its chora (agricultural district) were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

In 2015, Russian builders constructed observation decks on the towers, walls, and columns, and later placed an “ancient” open-air theater on the site of the ancient citadel, which imposed a load of approximately one ton on the original structure.

Russian archaeologists and builders lacked the requisite geological knowledge of the area adjacent to Tauric Chersonese. As a result, they removed the soil with ordinary excavators, unearthing an ancient spring that flooded the remains of the necropolis.

A complex of buildings is currently being constructed around Chersonesos with the intention of transforming it from an ancient city into a place of “Russian history” from which Christianity spread. An archaeological park has been constructed next to the archaeological remains, covering the old finds. An illegal new building in the southern suburbs of antique Chersonese has completely destroyed a cemetery dating back to the Roman Empire. The new buildings are actually changing the appearance of the ancient city, destroying a layer of the history of Crimea and Ukraine as a whole.

Furthermore, the Russian occupiers have been removing valuable finds from the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonese for over a year. The first incident of the theft of gold artifacts from the Byzantine period was reported on May 20, 2023. The artifacts were transported to Velykyi Novgorod (Russian Federation) for the Gold of Byzantium joint exhibition of federal museums, which commemorates the 570th anniversary of the fall of the empire. Currently, determining the exact amount of stolen property from the occupied territories is a complex and lengthy process.

According to the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies, more than 150,000 objects of cultural property are currently included in Russia’s state registers in Crimea alone. This means that Russia claims that these objects allegedly belong to it, illegally appropriating monuments and cultural values.