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By Lidia Kelly
June 21 (Reuters) – Dmitry Muratov, the co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and the editor of one among Russia’s final main unbiased newspapers, auctioned off his Nobel medal for a file $103.5 million to assist youngsters displaced by the battle in Ukraine.
All proceeds from the public sale, which coincided with the World Refugee Day on Monday, will profit UNICEF’s humanitarian response for Ukraine’s displaced youngsters, Heritage Auctions, which carried out the sale in New York, mentioned in a press release.
Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, fiercely essential of President Vladimir Putin and his authorities, suspended operations in Russia in March after warnings from the state over its protection of the battle in Ukraine.
Strain in opposition to liberal Russian media shops has been steady underneath Putin, Russia’s paramount chief since 1999, but it surely has mounted after Moscow despatched troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Muratov was attacked with purple paint in April.]
Russia’s mainstream media and state-controlled organisations observe intently the language utilized by the Kremlin to explain the battle with Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “particular operation” to make sure Russian safety and denazify its neighbour. Kyiv and its Western allies say it’s an unprovoked battle of aggression.
In response to U.S. media studies, the public sale of Muratov’s prize shattered the file for any Nobel medal that has been auctioned off, with studies saying that the earlier highest sale fetched slightly below $5 million.
“This award is not like some other public sale providing to current,” Heritage Auctions mentioned in a press release earlier than the sale.
“Mr. Muratov, with the complete help of his employees at Novaya Gazeta, is permitting us to public sale his medal not as a collectible however as an occasion that he hopes will positively affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.”
Muratov, who co-founded Novaya Gazeta in 1991, received the 2021 the Nobel Peace Prize with Maria Ressa of the Philippines for what the Nobel Prize committee mentioned had been “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”.
Muratov, who pledged to donate about $500,000 of that prize cash to charities, devoted his Nobel to the six Novaya Gazeta journalists who’ve been murdered since 2000.
That record included the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of Russia’s battle in Chechnya, who was killed in 2006 within the elevator of her Moscow house constructing. (Reporting in Melbourne by Lidia Kelly; Enhancing by Himani Sarkar and Michael Perry)