Director of the Hermitage Museum Sanctioned by the European Union

The European Union has imposed sanctions on Mikhail Piotrovsky, the 81-year-old director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, as part of its 20th sanctions package against Russia. Piotrovsky was blacklisted for supporting the war in Ukraine and overseeing illegal archaeological excavations in occupied Crimea. The EU cited his use of Kremlin war rhetoric—calling the museum's exhibition policy a "cultural special operation"—and the Hermitage's role in incorporating Ukrainian cultural objects from occupied territories into Russia's state museum fund. Additionally, under his leadership, unauthorized digs were conducted at the ancient Greek site of Myrmekion in Crimea, led by Hermitage archaeologist Alexander Butyagin, who was arrested in Warsaw and later released in a prisoner exchange.

This matters because Piotrovsky had long been the cultural face of Russia to the West, transforming the Hermitage from a struggling institution into a global powerhouse with a €69 million budget and 4.5 million annual visitors. His sanctioning severs the museum's international exhibition partnerships and freezes his EU assets, marking a definitive break between Russia's cultural elite and European institutions. The case also highlights the EU's expanding focus on cultural complicity in the war, targeting not just political figures but museum directors and archaeologists involved in the looting and appropriation of Ukrainian heritage.