Russia will return a religious icon given to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov by a member of the presidency after prosecutors in Bosnia-Herzegovina said they were trying to determine whether the gift had been illegally smuggled out of war-torn eastern Ukraine.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's Serb president Milorad Dodik, the current chair of the rotating post, gave a 300-year-old gilded icon to Lavrov during a visit the Russian made to Sarajevo this week.

But the move riled Kyiv, and the Ukrainian embassy in Bosnia sent a note demanding an "urgent explanation regarding the possession of their cultural heritage," the government in Bosnia said.

The artwork originates from Luhansk, a region in eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists.

Ukraine has been fighting Russian-speaking separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.