The money raised for the purchase in New York, which was closed by telephone by an unidentified person, will be donated to the UNICEF program for children uprooted due to the conflict, confirmed Heritage Auctions, which took over the sale.
Dmitry Muratov, the director of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, sold the Nobel Prize for $ 103.5 million at an auction Monday to help oust children displaced by deportation.
The money raised for the purchase in New York, which was closed by telephone by an unidentified person, will be donated to the UNICEF program for children uprooted due to the conflict, confirmed Heritage Auctions, which took over the sale.
Mr Muratov received the prestigious award in 2021, along with Filipino journalist Maria Resa; the committee honored them “for their efforts to promote freedom of expression”.
The Novaya Gazeta announced in late March that it was suspending its digital and paper-based publications in Russia until the end of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine amid a sharpening of the Kremlin’s stance on dissent.
Dmitry Muratov was a member of the group of journalists who founded the Novaya Gazeta in 1993, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Until its publication was suspended, it was the last newspaper to dare to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin.
She was known in particular for her investigations into corruption in Russia and for human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The work they did cost the lives of six of its editors in the 1990s. Among them was the famous journalist Anna Politovskaya, who was assassinated in 2006. Dmitry Muratov had dedicated the Nobel Peace Prize to their memory.
“This newspaper is dangerous for the life of the world,” he admitted in 2021, during an interview he gave to the French Agency.
In a video filmed for the Heritage Auctions auction, the journalist stressed that winning the Nobel Prize “gives you a chance to be heard”.
“The most important message today is that people understand that there is a war going on and we have to help those who are suffering the most,” he said, adding, in particular, “the children of refugee families.”
In early April, Dmitry Muratov was attacked inside a train in Russia by a stranger who covered him with a mixture of paint and acetone, causing burns to his eyes.
