Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner says Kremlin ordered him to decline award

Russian co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yan Rachinsky, said that Russian authorities ordered him to turn down the award. He has been heading a Memorial which is Russia's oldest civil rights group and was shut down by the government last year. Despite, the threats he has been receiving, he has continued to work for the Memorial dedicatedly.

He said that he was told not to accept the prize because the two other co-laureates - a Ukrainian human rights organisation and jailed Belarusian rights defender - were deemed "inappropriate", reported BBC. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry has not yet commented on the statements made by Yan Rachinsky. During the interview with BBC, He shared that his organisation has been suggested to denounce the award but that they 'took no notice of this advice'. 

"In today's Russia, no-one's personal safety can be guaranteed. Yes, many have been killed. But we know what impunity of the state leads to… We need to get out of this pit somehow," said Yan Rachinsky while talking in an interview with BBC.

Rachinsky was ordered to decline the Nobel prize

One of the main reasons was his work towards the Memorial which has been the oldest Civil Rights Group and has also documented historical Soviet repression. The group had its first chairman, Arseny Roginsky, who was punished in Soviet labor camps for "anti-communist" study of history. Memorial was founded on the idea that "confronting past crimes is essential in preventing new ones", said the Nobel committee while announcing Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Further, Rachinsky has called the decision of the Nobel committee "remarkable", reported BBC. He added, "Civil society is not divided by national borders, that it is a single body working to solve common problems". 

On the other hand, as per BBC, the choice to include a Russian recipient or not has been controversial. The winners of the Nobel Peace Prize this year from countries, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, have denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and shared their visions of an equal and fairer world on Saturday.

This happened during the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in the Norwegian capital. Meanwhile, another Nobel prize winner, the woman who has been running Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties had refused to be interviewed along with Russian recipient Yan Rachinsky.