The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to help displaced children in Ukraine sold for $ 103.5 million on Monday night, breaking a record. Proceeds will go to the UNICEF fund for refugee children, Heritage Auctions said in a statement after Muratov sold the prize to help children forced to flee their homes in Ukraine. The previous record for the Nobel Prize was set at $ 4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson was bidding on his prize in 1962 to jointly discover the structure of the double-stranded DNA. Muratov, editor of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which has criticized the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, said the results of the auction exceeded his expectations. Dmitry Muratov, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, was auctioning off his prize on June 21 for a record $ 103.5 million to help children displaced by the war. (Video: Reuters) Faced with Putin’s wartime censorship, Nobel laureate struggles to keep truth alive in Russia “The most important message today is for people to understand that there is a war going on and that we need to help the people who are suffering the most,” he said. The 60-year-old was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 along with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa for their work in promoting independent reporting in the face of growing authoritarianism. “Russia Bombs Ukraine” was featured on the front page of the first issue of Novaya Gazeta after the start of the Moscow invasion on February 24, with articles printed side by side in Russian and Ukrainian. Just over a month later, the newspaper announced that it would suspend operations until the end of the conflict, after receiving a new warning from Russia’s communications regulator as media repression and criticism of the war intensified. The United States says Russian intelligence has orchestrated the attack on the Nobel laureate In April, after Muratov was painted red and acetone on a train in Russia, the US government said it had concluded that the Russian intelligence service was behind the attack. The newspaper’s staff has been assassinated and threatened since the newspaper was founded in 1993, although this is the first time it has suspended its publication. Muratov, who has called for an anti-war movement, said he hoped his bid for his Nobel Prize at auction in New York would encourage others to donate. The event, organized by Heritage Auctions, coincided with World Refugee Day. “I hoped there would be a huge amount of solidarity, but I did not expect it to be so huge,” he told the Associated Press on Monday after the competition closed. “We need to start a flash mob or set an example for people to auction off their valuables to help Ukrainian refugees,” he said in a video earlier.
