Russian journalist sells Nobel Peace Prize medal for record US$103.5 million to aid Ukrainian children
- Dmitry Muratov, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year with journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines, auctions medal for charity
- All of the proceeds from the sale will go to Unicef’s Humanitarian Response for Ukrainian Children Displaced by War
The Nobel Peace Prize that Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov was auctioning off to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees sold Monday night for US$103.5 million, shattering the old record for a Nobel.
The medal was sold to an as yet unidentified phone bidder at the sale in New York.
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 US$4.76 million.
Three years later, the family of his co-recipient, Francis Crick, received US$2.27 million in bidding run by Heritage Auctions, the same company that auctioned off Muratov’s medal Monday, on World Refugee Day.
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 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It was Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying US$500,000 cash award to charity. The idea of the donation, he said, “is to give the children refugees a chance for a future.”