Executive director of Ukrainian civil liberties group reacts to Nobel Prize win, calls it ‘incredible’

The Center for Civil Liberties was informed that it was one of the recipients of the 2022 Nobel Prize during a phone call with Norwegian Nobel Committee’s Olav Njoelstad on Friday, minutes prior to the public announcement of the award.

The executive director of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, Oleksandra Romantsova, said winning the award was “incredible.”

“It is great, thank you,” she told Njoelstad, the secretary of the award committee, during a phone call that was filmed and broadcast on Norwegian television.

NOBEL PRIZE GOES TO 3 PHYSICISTS FOR WORK ON QUANTUM SCIENCE

Jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, highlighting the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.

The prize will be seen by many as a condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is celebrating his 70th birthday on Friday, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, making it one of the most politically contentious in decades.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARDED TO ACTIVISTS FROM BELARUS, RUSSIA, UKRAINE

The award, the first since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, has echoes of the Cold War era, when prominent Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn won Nobels for peace or literature.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 10 million Swedish crowns, or about $900,000, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.