The Nobel Peace Prize that Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned off to raise money for Ukraine’s child refugees has sold for 103.5 million dollars (£84.5m), shattering the old record for a Nobel. Previously, the most ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal was in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his medal for 4.76m (£3.9m) dollars.
Mr Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and public dissent in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
It was Mr Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying 500,000 dollars (£407,906) cash award to charity. The idea of the donation, he said, “is to give the children refugees a chance for a future”.
