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In a historic moment marking a new chapter of diplomatic and cultural engagement between France and post-Assad Syria, France has formally repatriated 23 ancient Syrian archaeological artifacts that were stranded abroad for nearly 15 years. The handover aligned with French President Emmanuel Macron’s groundbreaking trip to Damascus, the first official visit by a leader of a major Western nation since the ousting of Bashar Assad’s government at the end of 2024.

The full collection of relics, transported to Damascus on Macron’s official presidential aircraft on Tuesday, was formally delivered to Syria’s National Museum. The assortment of returned heritage objects spans thousands of years of Syrian history, including bronze artifacts from the Roman era, cultural pieces from the Byzantine and early Islamic periods, and a vividly hued mosaic panel that originally decorated the historic Umayyad Mosque in central Damascus. The artifacts were originally loaned to the Arab World Institute in Paris in 2011 for a temporary exhibition focused on Syrian cultural heritage, not long before Syria’s full civil war broke out.

According to Syria’s Foreign Ministry, the artifacts originated from leading museums across four major Syrian cities: Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, and the war-ravaged ancient city of Palmyra. They remained in French custody after the two countries severed diplomatic relations during Assad’s decades-long rule. The ministry noted that France is the first nation to formalize such a cultural cooperation agreement with Syria as the new government launches a national campaign to recover all Syrian antiquities held in collections around the globe.

At a special opening exhibition at the National Museum showcasing two of the most prominent returned pieces, Ayman al-Nabo, deputy director-general of Syria’s Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums, hailed the repatriation as a key milestone for the country’s cultural recovery. Nivine Saadeddine, a lead curator at the National Museum, emphasized that the returned artifacts encapsulate the breadth and depth of Syria’s millennia-long civilization. “They date from the ninth millennium B.C. to the 14th and 15th centuries A.D. Every object represents a distinct chapter in Syria’s history,” Saadeddine explained.

For Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s former director-general of antiquities and museums who now serves as a professor of archaeology at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the long-awaited return closes a difficult chapter marked by years of war, diplomatic deadlock, and multiple failed efforts to bring the artifacts home. The 2011 loan was arranged as part of routine cross-cultural exchange between the two countries before the outbreak of full-scale conflict, Abdulkarim recalled. He first submitted a formal request for the artifacts’ repatriation in 2014, but received no official response from French authorities. Later, French officials clarified that they were unable to engage with representatives of Assad’s government, which had become widely diplomatically isolated and subject to sweeping international sanctions following the regime’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests and the subsequent civil war.

Abdulkarim shared that the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO’s Beirut office attempted to mediate the dispute in later years, but those efforts also fell through. The prolonged standoff even carried severe personal risks for Abdulkarim and his colleagues under the Assad regime. “We were interrogated by Bashar Assad’s security forces,” he said. “We were beaten and accused of being too lenient in protecting Syria’s antiquities. Had it not been for the correspondence we had sent to the institute proving we had repeatedly requested the artifacts’ return, we could have been imprisoned.”

Despite the years of hardship and delay, Abdulkarim welcomed the restart of formal cultural cooperation between the two nations. “I am very happy that, despite everything that happened, the war is over, Syria is reopening to the world and cultural exchange is returning,” he said.

Abdulkarim noted that a small number of Syrian artifacts have been repatriated under existing formal loan agreements even during the war and period of severed diplomatic ties. Around 2017, for example, Italy returned two Syrian artifacts that had been damaged by the Islamic State (IS) group, after completing restoration work for a Rome exhibition focused on the global destruction of cultural heritage. A smaller collection of Syrian artifacts still remains in Japan under a long-standing archaeological cooperation agreement stemming from joint excavation work conducted in the 1980s.

Still, the scale of Syria’s lost cultural heritage remains immense. Abdulkarim estimates that thousands of artifacts looted from archaeological sites across Syria during the 14-year conflict are currently held in private collections and museums across the globe. “Recovering them will require years of diplomatic work,” he said. He added that France’s decision to repatriate the 23 artifacts sends a hopeful signal to the international community and can encourage more widespread global cooperation to recover Syria’s stolen cultural legacy.

Syria’s rich cultural heritage suffered catastrophic damage across the nearly 14 years of conflict. Multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the ancient desert city of Palmyra, were heavily damaged by fighting and intentional destruction by extremist groups. Other iconic landmarks, such as the medieval Crusader fortress of Crac des Chevaliers, still bear visible scars from years of combat. IS militants deliberately destroyed ancient temples, tombs, and monumental sculptures in Palmyra, labeling these irreplaceable cultural artifacts as symbols of idolatry, while the illegal trafficking of looted Syrian antiquities became a major source of funding for armed groups operating in the country.

In a dramatic escalation of its campaign to cut off Russian supply lines to occupied Crimea, Ukraine’s unmanned military forces have launched a wave of coordinated naval drone strikes targeting Russian commercial and military shipping in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea, part of Kyiv’s self-declared “logistics lockdown” of the peninsula.

Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s drone forces who operates under the callsign Magyar, has reported that between July 6 and July 9, at least 25 vessels were hit and set ablaze across the Sea of Azov, an inland body of water connected to the Black Sea via the strategic Kerch Strait. Ukraine’s overall count of damaged or destroyed vessels stands at 36, most of which are part of Russia’s unregulated “shadow fleet” of commercial oil tankers that operate outside international shipping norms to evade Western sanctions. The exact number of damaged vessels remains unconfirmed by independent observers, as some ships may have been struck multiple times.

The Sea of Azov off Crimea’s northeastern coast has long been a hub for Russian oil shipping, anchored by an onshore fuel loading terminal at Kerch port on the Crimean peninsula. After Ukraine launched a strike on Kerch port last month, satellite analysis conducted by BBC Verify confirmed a sharp drop in the number of tankers anchored in the area in the days following the attack. Night-time drone footage of the latest wave of strikes began circulating on social media platforms early Tuesday, with Brovdi confirming daily strikes across the four-day window.

Independent evidence has backed up Ukraine’s claims. Satellite imagery captured on July 9 shows a large column of smoke rising from a vessel roughly 2.5 miles off Crimea’s coast, and NASA fire tracking data confirms an active blaze has burned at that location since July 6, matching Ukraine’s claim of an initial strike on that date. The same satellite image shows roughly 20 other vessels abandoning their positions in the Sea of Azov and moving south toward the Black Sea to avoid attack. Even leaving the Sea of Azov does not guarantee safety, however: On July 9, Ukraine’s general staff released footage of a naval drone strike on the sanctioned Russian tanker Blue off the coast of Yalta, a Black Sea resort city on occupied Crimea. The on-board drone footage shows the unmanned vessel evading defensive fire before approaching the tanker’s hull, where the recording cuts off.

Russia’s regional governor of Rostov, Yuri Slyusar, confirmed that two empty tankers were attacked in Taganrog Bay, the northeastern corner of the Sea of Azov, on July 8, adding that the vessels were still burning the following day. Brovdi confirmed that two tankers hit earlier in the week were carrying roughly 7,000 tons of fuel each from the Taganrog area to supply Russian forces and occupied Crimea. In addition to tankers, strikes have hit other commercial vessels: a passenger ferry named SKS One and a bulk carrier were attacked at Kerch port, with imagery of the damaged ferry posted to social media by Brovdi. Brovdi has also named specific vessels hit in the strikes, including the tankers Venera-3, Sanar-1, Sanar-17, Klimena, Thetis, Alexey Savrasov, and Penelopa.

This wave of maritime strikes coincides with a separate campaign of attacks on Russian oil infrastructure deep inside Russian territory, which has exacerbated widespread fuel shortages across more than 90% of Russia’s regions, including major cities Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has defended the strategy, arguing that targeting Russian energy infrastructure is a legitimate response to Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory, and that Russian civilians must “feel that it is their state that is waging war.” Zelensky also confirmed recent attacks on two oil depots in the Tver and Stavropol regions, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines, as well as a major oil terminal in Rostov region, widely reported to be the Yug Rusi terminal near Taganrog Bay. Russia has responded to the ongoing shortages by implementing diesel export bans, and long queues at filling stations have been reported across the country’s largest urban centers.

The strikes mark a major escalation of Ukraine’s campaign to choke off all supply routes to occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in a move unrecognized by most of the international community. Ukraine has already disrupted Russian land supply routes to the peninsula, and the latest attacks target the remaining maritime supply lines that Moscow relies on to meet Crimea’s energy needs. In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that Crimea requires 70,000 tons of fuel per month, and promised to secure steady supplies via both land and sea corridors. The total volume of fuel carried by the tankers hit in the Sea of Azov strikes exceeds this monthly requirement, representing a significant setback to Putin’s pledge.

Russian pro-military commentators have openly acknowledged the severity of the setback, criticizing the Russian Black Sea Fleet for failing to provide protection for commercial shipping. The popular pro-war Telegram channel “Military Informant” described unescorted tankers as effectively an open “shooting gallery” for Ukrainian drone operators, noting that the Black Sea Fleet is no longer capable of defending commercial traffic in the region. Another prominent pro-military blogger, Mikhail Zvinchuk of the Telegram channel Rybar, confirmed that the Black Sea Fleet has retreated to its base at Novorossiysk and largely abandoned patrols of the Sea of Azov and northern Black Sea around Crimea. For Russian-occupied Crimea, where local authorities already face ongoing disruptions to power and transport networks, the loss of critical fuel supplies is expected to deepen existing crises, with fuel rationing already in place in much of the region.

International reaction to the escalation has been mixed. During a meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 8, U.S. President Donald Trump characterized Ukraine’s naval drone strategy as an escalation of the conflict, but added that “it’s also an escalation that can help lead to an end.” As of mid-July, the intensity of attacks shows no sign of slowing: Brovdi claimed that Ukrainian forces hit 12 separate tankers in a single night between July 8 and July 9, and Russian pro-war sources have not disputed either the details of the claim or the authenticity of the attack footage released by Ukraine.