The Nobel Foundation has announced its intention to invite all diplomats represented in Sweden to the Nobel Prize ceremony. This includes representatives from Russia and Belarus.
“It is clear that the world is increasingly divided into spheres where dialogue between people with different views is reduced,” said Vidar Helgesen, executive director of the Nobel Foundation as The Kyiv Independent says. This year’s award ceremony and banquet will be held Dec. 10. Last year, the foundation announced that it would not invite representatives of Russia and Belarus to the festivities in Stockholm – as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. In 2022, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Belarusian Ales Bialiatski, a pro-democracy activist who was recently sentenced to ten years in prison by a Belarusian court.
IOC has excluded Russia and Belarus from the Olympic Games
The foundation justified its decision by saying that “we live in an increasingly polarized world characterized by the denial of science, resistance to knowledge, and threats to freedom of expression, democracy, and human rights.” The Aug. 31 announcement did not specifically address Bialiatski’s detention or Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Nobel Foundation’s decision comes a month after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced it would exclude Russia and Belarus from the 2024 Games in Paris.
Image: kremlin.ru, Vladimir Putin (2018-06-14), CC-BY-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image size changed)
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