In the midst of the war in Ukraine, when it revealed this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian team had a target: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yesterday, at the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, the laureates did not fail to point out that the Kremlin is strong and Russia’s “imperial ambitions” were targeted with their attacks.
“The people of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world. But peace for a country under attack cannot be achieved by laying down arms. That is not peace, but aggression.”The director of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Rights, Oleksandra Matvychuk, told AFP that she had to write her speech by candlelight because of Russian bombing of her country’s energy infrastructure.
Belarusian activist Ales Byaliatskyi, his wife Natalya Pinchuk, the Russian non-governmental organization (dissolved by Moscow) Memorial and the Ukrainian Center were represented at the ceremony and awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for “promoting the right to critique. Protection of citizens’ empowerment and basic rights”.
Matvichuk said in his speech. In the nine-month war, the center has already accounted for “more than 27,000” war crimes, which it admits is the “tip of the iceberg”. The director of the Ukrainian Center, created in 2007, recalled that “war turns people into numbers”, arguing that it is necessary to “name all the victims of war crimes”. He also reiterated the need for an international court to try Putin and other “war criminals”.
Yan Rachinsky, director of the Russian NGO Monument, said: Any protest action in Russia is called “fascism” and it has become the “ideological justification for the insane and criminal war in Ukraine.” Despite the harsh prison sentences now imposed on anyone who publicly criticizes the invasion, Raczynski did not mince his words.
In an interview with the BBC, he also revealed that the Kremlin advised him to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize before receiving the award because other laureates were deemed “unfit”. The director of the NGO criticized the “imperialist ambitions” of his country, which was inherited from the former Soviet Union and is “still flourishing”.
The memorial, created in 1989 to cover up the crimes of Stalin’s regime, was dissolved by a ruling by the Russian Supreme Court late last year. “Today, the number of political prisoners in Russia exceeds the total number in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the perestroika period in the 1980s,” he said.
The third recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize this year is Belarusian Ales Bialiatsky, 60, founder of the NGO Vyasna – the fourth recipient of the award while in prison. He was represented at the ceremony by his wife and was not even allowed to write a speech.
In Ukraine, Russia wants to establish “a slave dictatorship, the same thing as in Belarus, the voice of the oppressed people is ignored, Russian military bases, a huge economic dependency, Russification of culture and language”., said Natalia Pinchuk. Detained since July 2021, Bialiatsky is awaiting trial where he could be sentenced to 12 years in prison for “smuggling” money to the opposition.
“Hardcore explorer. Extreme communicator. Professional writer. General music practitioner. Prone to fits of apathy.”