The award of the journalist Dmitry Muratov reached a record number for that piece; the amount goes entirely to Ukrainian children
Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has managed to raise almost a hundred million euros with the auction of the medal that accredits him as the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. The medal was sold in New York on Monday and brought the record amount of 103.5 million dollars. at (98.3 million euros), which will go entirely to UNICEF to help Ukrainian children.
The bidding, led by auction house Heritage, lasted 20 minutes, with the price of the medal rising from $787,000 to $15 million, when suddenly an anonymous buyer reported by telephone that he was paying $103.5 million dollars, causing the sale. ended.
While other medals won by Nobel laureates have been sold or auctioned in the past, none have ever reached a tenth of that amount, and in fact the most expensive medal had sold in 2014 for $4.76 million.
The Heritage House waives the usual auction rates, so the full amount will go to Unicef.
Muratov, founder and director of the last Russian dissident newspaper, ‘Novaya Gazeta’, founded in 1993 and now closed, was one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners in 2021. He and Philippine journalist Maria Ressa were awarded for “his valiant fight for freedom of expression and its efforts to defend freedom of expression, an essential condition for democracy and peace.”
The journalist, who was invited to the auction, recalled that 40% of the 16 million Ukrainian refugees are children, or that two-thirds of Ukrainian children have had to leave their homes, something he says had never happened in a conflict in such a short time.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize gave the example of a Ukrainian boy who was in Russia asking him for money “to charge the phone that allowed him to call his mother in Ukraine”, and he asked the public to introduce himself. a moment in place.
Muratov has distinguished himself in Russia for years as a tireless fighter for freedom of expression. The newspaper he heads has published articles on topics ranging from “corruption, police brutality and illegal arrests to the use of Russian troops outside the country”. In the nearly 30 years of the newspaper’s existence, “six of its journalists were murdered, including Anna Politkóvskaya”, whose death is 15 years ago.
Despite numerous threats, Muratov steadfastly defended the right of journalists to cover critical issues. “It even makes me laugh. I didn’t expect it at all. I saw a phone call from Norway, but I thought it was a mistake,” Muratov said when receiving the Swedish medal.
In his words: “I can only say that it is up to us to bear the weight of the prize, but it is really up to Russian journalism as a whole, which they are now trying to suppress. We will try to help the informants who being labeled as foreign agents and rotting away and those being expelled from the country.” In the Kremlin, however, they applauded that the Nobel Peace Prize went to the director of ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’.
Muratov is the third Russian to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Before him, it was imposed on academic Andrei Sakharov and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
Source: La Verdad
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