Two years after the then Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Milorad Dodik presented the 300-year-old icon to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH is not one step closer to discovering its fate. Is the dust settling on the ”Icon” affair?
For days, all eyes were on the gilded icon of Saint Nicholas.
To Milorad Dodik’s gift to Sergey Lavrov, presented as an icon from Lugansk, a part of Ukraine occupied by the Russians, Ukraine reacted with a diplomatic note to the BiH presidency.
They claimed that the icon was a Ukrainian cultural treasure.
Lavrov returned the icon to BiH on December 23rd, 2020, and the State Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation. Two years later, nothing more is known about the icon.
”In the aforementioned case, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, through the Institute of International Legal Aid, requested from the competent institutions of Ukraine, certain information and evidence on the registration of the icon in the Register of Cultural Property, information on the storage of the icon, the report of alienation and other relevant evidence,” Boris Grubesic from the BiH Prosecutor’s Office said.
”To date, we have not received all the requested documentation and evidence from the competent institutions of Ukraine,” he added.
The Ukrainian embassy did not respond to an inquiry about the existence and status of the documentation.
Previously, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of Ukraine initiated proceedings in connection with the illegal export of the icon, RSE reports.
E.Dz.
