The U.S.-based Antiquities Coalition has added an 8,000-year-old artifact—believed to have been looted by Russian forces during the invasion of Mariupol—to its list of the “Ten most wanted antiquities”The Coalition, headquartered in Washington, D.C., raised global alarm over the “Mariupol bull figurine,” one of more than 2,000 museum items that vanished amid the chaos of Russia’s siege of Mariupol in 2022. The announcement came during an August 5th event hosted by the Atlantic Council.The figurine’s addition to the list was made in the presence of Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Culture, Halyna Hryhorenko, highlighting the ongoing Russian threat to Ukraine’s people and cultural heritage.“The war Russia launched against Ukraine is not just a war for territory. It’s not even just a war for political independence. It’s a war for the right to remember, the right to have a distinct history, and the right to remain Ukrainian—both in the eyes of the world and our children,” said Hryhorenko.Since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainian museums, archaeological sites, and heritage institutions have faced widespread looting. Officials estimate that at least 1.7 million artifacts have been lost in what experts describe as a deliberate campaign to erase Ukraine’s past and profit from its stolen heritage.The Mariupol Bull Figurine—carved from bone around 6000 BCE by Neolithic people living near the Sea of Azov—was likely used as a toy or ritual object. It was carefully buried in a child’s grave, where it remained undisturbed for nearly 8,000 years. Archaeologist Mykola Makarenko, a pioneer of Ukrainian archaeology, unearthed the palm-sized relic in the 1930s at one of Eastern Europe’s most significant prehistoric sites. Before disappearing sometime between 2022 and 2024, the figurine had been on display at the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore.Its disappearance, the Coalition notes, echoes the fate of Makarenko himself—arrested in 1934 for refusing to cooperate with Soviet efforts to destroy cultural monuments, he was exiled and later executed in Siberia in 1938.While the figurine’s current whereabouts remain unknown, photos of it have surfaced in Russian museum exhibitions promoting the Azov region as historically Russian. This raises serious concerns that the artifact may already be in Russian possession and used to support territorial claims.“This ancient object is more than an archaeological relic—its theft is a deliberate act of cultural aggression that symbolizes Russia’s broader campaign to erase Ukrainian identity,” said Deborah Lehr, chair and founder of the Antiquities Coalition.“By placing it on the list of the ten most wanted antiquities, we call on the international community to take action—not only to recover this irreplaceable piece of history but to stop the weaponization of heritage in war.”The Mariupol artifact replaces Ethiopia’s Qur’ata Re’esu icon, which officials identified in Portugal in 2023.Authorities urge anyone with information on the bull figurine’s whereabouts to contact:The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)U.S. Homeland Security InvestigationsINTERPOLThe “Ten most wanted antiquities” list is modeled after the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” and aims to spotlight the world’s most significant looted, stolen, and missing cultural objects.