Originally published 2022-06-20.
On 20 June 2022, Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov sold the gold medal from his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize at an auction in New York for $103.5 million, the highest price ever paid for a Nobel medal. Every dollar went to UNICEF’s humanitarian response for Ukrainian children displaced by Russia’s full-scale invasion. The buyer, who bid by phone, was not named.
Below is the background to the sale: who Muratov is, why he chose to part with the medal, how the auction unfolded, and how it compares with earlier Nobel medal sales.
Who Dmitry Muratov is
Muratov was born on 29 October 1961 in Kuybyshev, now Samara. In 1993 he and more than 50 colleagues who had left Komsomolskaya Pravda founded Novaya Gazeta, which became one of the few independent newspapers in Russia. He served as its editor-in-chief from 1995 to 2017 and again from 2019.
The paper became known for investigations into corruption, human rights abuses and the wars in Chechnya. Several of its journalists and contributors were killed over the years, among them Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in Moscow in 2006.
In October 2021 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize jointly to Muratov and Maria Ressa of the Philippines, honouring their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression as a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.
Why he auctioned the medal
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Within weeks Novaya Gazeta, which had criticised the war, suspended its operations on 28 March 2022 after a second official warning from Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. A few days earlier, on 22 March, Muratov had announced that he would auction his Nobel medal and give the proceeds to help Ukrainian refugees. He had already said that he would donate his share of the prize money, about $500,000, to charity.
He hoped the sale would encourage others to follow suit. Speaking to the Associated Press before the auction, he explained his aim with a short line: “We want to return their future.” He described the auction as a possible start of a wider movement in which people would sell valuable possessions to help Ukrainians.
He chose UNICEF because, as he said after the sale, the organisation “does not belong to any government”, and he stressed that its work crosses borders.
Attacked on a train
Muratov paid a personal price for speaking out. On 7 April 2022, while travelling by train from Moscow to Samara, he was doused with red paint mixed with acetone, which caused chemical burns to his eyes. United States officials later said Russian intelligence had organised the attack.
How the auction unfolded
The sale was run by Heritage Auctions in New York and closed on Monday 20 June 2022, which was also World Refugee Day. Online bidding had been open for weeks, and in the days before the sale the top bid reportedly stood at only a few hundred thousand dollars.
The final round changed everything. Bidders in the room and on the phones drove the price far higher, and the winning bid came in tens of millions of dollars above the previous offer. Reporters described applause and audible surprise, including from Muratov himself. Heritage’s chief strategy officer Joshua Benesh had called it a highly unusual sale: a unique object, sold under unique circumstances, at a time of huge humanitarian need.
The medal is made of about 175 grams of 23-carat gold. At 2022 prices the metal alone was worth roughly $10,000, so nearly all of the $103.5 million reflected the medal’s history and the cause it supported.
Other Nobel medals that have been sold
Muratov was not the first laureate to sell a medal, but he broke the record by a huge margin. In December 2014 the molecular biologist James Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on the structure of DNA, sold his medal at Christie’s for about $4.1 million at the hammer, widely reported as about $4.76 million including fees. He was the first living laureate to auction his medal. The buyer, Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, later gave it back to him.
Other laureates’ medals have reached the market through their families or estates. Muratov’s sale stands out because a laureate gave up the medal while the cause he was helping was still unfolding.
Facts and common confusions
The announcement versus the sale. In spring 2022, many headlines said Muratov had “auctioned” his prize when he had only announced plans to do so. The sale itself happened on 20 June 2022.
The prize versus the medal. The Nobel Peace Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a share of the prize money. Muratov sold the medal. He had separately pledged his share of the cash prize to charity.
Where the money went. The proceeds were directed to UNICEF’s humanitarian response for Ukrainian children displaced by the war, rather than to Muratov or to Novaya Gazeta.
What happened next
Millions of Ukrainians had to leave their homes, in Europe’s biggest refugee movement since 1945. Casualty figures on both sides remain uncertain, but they are very high.
Novaya Gazeta continued in exile as Novaya Gazeta Europe, launched from Riga, Latvia, in April 2022. Muratov stayed in Russia. On 1 September 2023 the Russian authorities designated him a “foreign agent”, a label they use against critics of the state. His medal auction remains one of the most striking acts of personal generosity linked to the war, and a reminder of how independent journalism and humanitarian aid can meet.
Sources: Associated Press via Inquirer, 21 June 2022: Russian Nobel laureate sells medal for $103.5M to benefit Ukraine kids; Wikipedia: Dmitry Muratov; Wikipedia: James Watson. Original reporting by the Associated Press.
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