Head of Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL) said on Saturday that the group’s Nobel Peace Prize award belongs to every Ukrainian citizen who fights for freedom.
During a news conference in Kyiv, Oleksandra Matviycuk stressed that the current international security system has to be reformed in the wake of over seven months of conflict between Ukraine and neighbouring Russia.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak had questioned the decision to jointly award the prize with jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski and Russian rights group Memorial.
“Nobel Committee has an interesting understanding of word peace if representatives of two countries that attacked a third one receive @NobelPrize together,” Podolyak said on Twitter.
In reaction to that point, Matviychuk held aloft a sign reading “for our and your freedom.” The prize will be seen by many as a condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who celebrated his 70th birthday on Friday (October 7), and his key regional ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, making it one of the most politically contentious in decades.
The award, the first since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, has echoes of the Cold War era, when prominent Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn won Nobels for peace or literature.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 10 million Swedish crowns, or about $900,000, will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
