These are the reasons why Dmitry Muratov auctioned off his Nobel Prize 1:00
(CNN) --
Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, auctioned off his medal for $103.5 million on Monday, the proceeds of which will be donated to help Ukrainian refugee children.
Heritage Auctions tweeted that Muratov "auctioned his 2021 #NobelPeacePrize to benefit UNICEF's refugee children's fund. It sold for $103.5 million."
Dmitry Muratov's Nobel Prize medal fetched US$103.5 million.
All proceeds from the auction, which concluded on World Refugee Day, will go to UNICEF's humanitarian response for Ukrainian children displaced by war, according to the auction house.
"Right now, the prize is an opportunity to share it with people," Muratov said before the auction, urging people from all over the world to join the cause and make their contributions.
According to Heritage Auctions' description of the medal for sale, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Olav Njølstad, supported the auction, calling it a "generous act of humanitarianism."
The latest figures show that there have been more than 7.7 million border crossings from Ukraine, and more than 5 million refugees from Ukraine have been registered across Europe since the Russian invasion in late February, according to the agency. of the UN for refugees, UNHCR.
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100 million people around the world have been forced from their homes.
That's more than the population of most countries.
In an appeal for donations, UNICEF says Ukraine's 7.5 million children have been deeply affected by the ongoing conflict, including being separated from their families, lacking basic supplies and resources, and facing daily threat of explosives.
Nobel Peace Prize winners Dmitry Muratov of Russia (right) and Maria Ressa of the Philippines receive their awards during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony at City Hall in Oslo, Norway, in December 2021. Credit : Alexander Zemlyanichenko/AP
Heritage Auctions' description continues: "The goal is to use this event to raise awareness of refugee crises and for donations to continue long after the June 20 auction."
The crackdown on the media in Russia
Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Prize with Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa for what the judges described as his "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression."
Muratov is the editor-in-chief of the Russian independent media outlet Novaya Gazeta.
He "criticized Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and the government's use of military force, both inside and outside Russia," according to the Nobel Peace Prize organization.
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Six of the paper's journalists have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaya, a strident Kremlin critic who reported on human rights abuses in Chechnya.
Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has tightened its control over the country's independent media.
In March, lawmakers criminalized the dissemination of "false" information that discredits the Russian military or calls for sanctions against the country.
The repression has forced some media outlets to close their doors and their journalists to leave the country.
In early March, Novaya Gazeta said it had removed articles about the war in Ukraine from its website due to government censorship.
That same month, the newspaper announced that it was suspending publication until the end of the war in Ukraine.
-- Anna Cooban, Eoin McSweeney and Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting.
War in Ukraine Nobel Peace Prize Auction