Nobel Peace Prize goes to Ukraine, Russia, Belarus rights campaigners amid war

Jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, amid war in their region that is the worst conflict in Europe since World War Two.

The award, the first peace prize 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 the Nobel for peace or literature.

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

"We believe that it is a war that is a result of an authoritarian regime, aggressively committing an act of aggression," Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told Reuters after the announcement.

She said the committee wanted to honor "three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence."

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