The Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate on Saturday (December 10) lashed out at President Vladimir Putin and called the invasion of Ukrainian regions “insane and criminal”.
While accepting his award in Oslo, Yan Rachinsky said that “resistance to Russia is called ‘fascism'”, which is now the “ideological justification for the insane and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Jailed Belarusian rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, Russian organisation Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
Amid the ongoing Ukraine war and several other conflicts, the trio was honoured by the Nobel committee for their struggle for “human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence”.
Rachinsky, who heads the human rights organisation Memorial, said that Russia’s “imperial ambitions” inherited from the ex-Soviet Union “that still thrive today”.
He added that the Russian president and his “ideological servants” have hijacked the anti-fascist struggle “for their own political interests” and any “resistance to Russia is called ‘fascism'”.
Meanwhile, the leader of a Ukrainian rights group that won the Nobel Peace Prize said that Ukraine should continue to fight Russian troops. He further added that any move to address the crisis by diplomatic talks would be interpreted as a sign of weakness.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, who is the head of the CCL, said: “The people of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world. But peace cannot be reached by a country under attack laying down its arms.”
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