Nobel Peace Prize winning Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has auctioned off his gold medal for $103.5 million (£84 million) to raise money for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
The editor-in-chief at Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was co-awarded the prestigious prize honouring the independent paper’s reporting on corruption.
Heritage Auctions, which conducted the sale of the gold medal in New York, hasn’t revealed the winning bidder.
They said the sale will benefit Unicef’s humanitarian response for Ukraine’s displaced children.
"The most important message today is for people to understand that there’s a war going on and we need to help people who are suffering the most," Muratov said in a video statement.
Novaya Gazeta suspended its operations in March just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moscow at the time said anyone who described Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a “war” would face heavy fines or closures.
Muratov had dedicated the Nobel award to his fallen Novaya Gazeta colleagues - six journalists and collaborators having been murdered since 2000. He said: “This award is not mine.
“It was awarded to colleagues, who have been killed, who have perished — Anna Politkovskaya, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Natalya Estemirova, Anastasia Baburova, Stanislav Markelov…”
Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter and vocal critic of Putin and Russia’s abuses in Chechnya, was shot in a lift in her block of flats in 2006.
Muratov himself was attacked with red paint laced with the solvent acetone as he rode a train in Russia in April. The attacker shouted, “Muratov, this is for our boys.”
Muratov was born in Kuibyshev, southwestern Russia (now known as Samara). He studied the history of language at university where he became interested in journalism.
After graduating, he served in the Soviet army working in communication and security and went into newspapers. In 1993, he and colleagues from a newspaper called Komsomolskaya Pravda left to start Novaya Gazeta.
Their goal was to create an honest and independent news source. It started with two computers, one printer and staff working for free.
