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Ambassadors from Russia and its ally Belarus will be invited back to the Nobel Prize ceremonies, a decision that drew criticism in Kiev after the two countries were excluded last year over the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
The Nobel Foundation announced that this year ambassadors from all countries with diplomatic representation in Sweden and Norway will be invited to the awards ceremonies. The ceremonies take place in Stockholm and Oslo.
“The achievements recognized by the Nobel Prize require openness, exchange and dialogue between people and nations,” the foundation said in a statement, adding that it “wants this message to reach everyone, including those who do not share these values.” of the Nobel Prize.”
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko responded on Friday, calling on the Nobel Foundation to “support international efforts to isolate Russia and Belarus.” The “decision to return to the agenda” would only increase the “feeling of impunity” in the Kremlin, he added.
“Most likely, the day the Russian ambassador sits in the Stockholm concert hall in a nice suit, the Russian army will commit another war crime in the occupied Ukrainian territories,” he wrote.
Five of the six Nobel Prizes are awarded in ceremonies in Stockholm each year, while the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. The private foundation that runs the awards typically invites ambassadors to the ceremony, which takes place on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of industrialist Alfred Nobel.
Human rights defenders in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus win Nobel Prize
The Nobel Foundation last year barred representatives from Moscow and Minsk, saying it would “follow Swedish and European diplomatic policy of not inviting Russia and Belarus because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
In contrast, Vidar Helgesen, the Nobel Foundation’s executive director, said this year that it was “clear that the world is increasingly divided into spheres in which dialogue between people with different views is limited.”
“To counteract this tendency, we are now extending our invitations to celebrate and understand the Nobel Prize and the importance of free science, free culture and free, peaceful societies,” he added.
criticism The Observer noted that in recent months a Belarusian court sentenced jailed human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, one of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, to 10 years in prison.
Belarus sentences Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski to ten years in prison
Bialiatski shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which documents Russia’s alleged war crimes, and the Russian human rights group Memorial.
The Nobel Foundation’s press office said in an email on Friday that the award winners would be announced and invitations would be sent out in October. The tradition is to invite all ambassadors to the awards ceremony, while only ambassadors of the countries that have winners this year attend the banquet.
The foundation’s statement follows the International Olympic Committee’s announcement that Russia and Belarus would not receive formal invitations to the Paris 2024 Games, although athletes from both countries could potentially compete as independent athletes.
The IOC says it will not invite Russia or Belarus to the Paris Olympics
It was not immediately clear whether the Nobel Foundation’s invitation of all ambassadors also meant that a representative of Iran, who was barred last year, could attend the ceremony in December.
Tehran said in July that this would happen despite the appointment of a new ambassador to Sweden refrain stopped sending the diplomat in protest at the burning of a Koran outside a Stockholm mosque amid a series of incidents in which Islam’s holiest book was desecrated.
Along with Russia and Belarus, the Nobel Foundation excluded Tehran from the 2022 ceremony because the country had experienced a “serious and escalating situation” during months of Iran’s crackdown on abuses such as gender discrimination and economic neglect.
Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this report.