Hu­man rights ac­tivists from Ukraine, Be­larus and Rus­sia won the No­bel Peace Prize on Fri­day, a strong re­buke to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, whose in­va­sion of Ukraine has rup­tured decades of near­ly un­in­ter­rupt­ed peace in Eu­rope, and to the Be­laru­sian pres­i­dent, his au­thor­i­tar­i­an al­ly.

The Nor­we­gian No­bel Com­mit­tee award­ed the 2022 prize to im­pris­oned Be­larus ac­tivist Ales Biali­ats­ki, the Russ­ian group Memo­r­i­al and the Ukrain­ian or­ga­ni­za­tion Cen­ter for Civ­il Lib­er­ties.

Berit Reiss-An­der­sen, chair of the Nor­we­gian No­bel Com­mit­tee, said the pan­el want­ed to ho­n­our “three out­stand­ing cham­pi­ons of hu­man rights, democ­ra­cy and peace­ful co­ex­is­tence.”

“We are in the midst of a war and we are talk­ing about two au­thor­i­tar­i­an regimes and one na­tion fight­ing a war and we would like to high­light the im­por­tance of civ­il so­ci­ety,” she said.

In Ukraine, there was some re­sent­ment at the No­bel com­mit­tee for award­ing the Ukrain­ian group along­side ac­tivists from Rus­sia and Be­larus, whose gov­ern­ment al­lowed Russ­ian forces to at­tack Ukraine from its ter­ri­to­ry ear­ly in the war.

Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial ad­vis­er Mykhai­lo Podolyak tweet­ed that the No­bel com­mit­tee has “an in­ter­est­ing un­der­stand­ing of the word ‘peace’ if rep­re­sen­ta­tives of two coun­tries that at­tacked a third one re­ceive” the prize to­geth­er.

“Nei­ther Russ­ian nor Be­laru­sian or­ga­ni­za­tions were able to or­ga­nize re­sis­tance to the war,” he added.

FILE - Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski is welcomed by his supporters at a railway terminal in Minsk, Belarus, on Saturday, June 21, 2014. On Friday, Oct. 7, 2022 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties. (AP Photo/Dmitry Brushko, File)

Be­larus’ For­eign Min­istry de­nounced the No­bel Com­mit­tee for ho­n­our­ing Biali­ats­ki, with the spokesman call­ing its choic­es in re­cent years so “politi­cized” that “Al­fred No­bel got tired of turn­ing in his grave.”

Olav Njøl­stad, di­rec­tor of the Nor­we­gian No­bel In­sti­tute, re­tort­ed: “Well, I’m quite sure we un­der­stand Al­fred No­bel’s will and in­ten­tions bet­ter than the dic­ta­tor­ship in Min­sk.”

Asked whether the No­bel Com­mit­tee was in­ten­tion­al­ly re­buk­ing Putin, whose 70th birth­day is Fri­day, Reiss-An­der­sen said the prize was not against any­body but for the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues the win­ners cham­pi­on. How­ev­er, she did note that both Russ­ian and Be­laru­sian gov­ern­ments were “sup­press­ing hu­man rights ac­tivists.”

It was the sec­ond straight year that Putin’s re­pres­sive gov­ern­ment was im­plic­it­ly re­buked with the prize. It was award­ed last year to Dmit­ry Mu­ra­tov, ed­i­tor of the in­de­pen­dent Russ­ian news­pa­per No­vaya Gaze­ta, and Philip­pine jour­nal­ist Maria Ressa, for their ef­forts to safe­guard free­dom of ex­pres­sion. Both have strug­gled in the past year.

Biali­ats­ki was a leader of the democ­ra­cy move­ment in Be­larus in the mid-1980s and has con­tin­ued to cam­paign for hu­man rights and civ­il lib­er­ties. He found­ed the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion Hu­man Rights Cen­ter Vi­as­na.

He was de­tained fol­low­ing protests in 2020 against the re-elec­tion of Be­larus’ Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko. He re­mains in jail with­out tri­al and faces up to 12 years in prison if con­vict­ed.

“De­spite tremen­dous per­son­al hard­ship, Mr. Biali­ats­ki has not yield­ed one inch in his fight for hu­man rights and democ­ra­cy in Be­larus,” Reiss-An­der­sen said.

FILE - Russian human rights activist and the Chairwoman of the Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina speaks to journalists in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. Gannuskhina is a member of the council of Russian human rights organisation Memorial, one of the two organisations awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties and with the jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Ex­iled Be­larus op­po­si­tion leader Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya, vis­it­ing Paris, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press she felt “ho­n­oured and de­light­ed” that Biali­ats­ki was among the lau­re­ates and be­lieved it would put more in­ter­na­tion­al fo­cus on hu­man rights abuse in her home­land.

Tsikhanouskaya, whose hus­band is al­so im­pris­oned, said Biali­ats­ki “is suf­fer­ing a lot in pun­ish­ment cells” in Be­larus.

Svet­lana Alex­ievich, a Be­laru­sian jour­nal­ist and writer who won the 2015 No­bel Prize in lit­er­a­ture, called Biali­ats­ki “a leg­endary fig­ure.” She added that Biali­ats­ki is “se­ri­ous­ly ill” and needs med­ical treat­ment but is “un­like­ly to be freed from be­hind bars.”

“What Vi­as­na, found­ed by him, has done and is do­ing in the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, is in his spir­it, in his phi­los­o­phy,” Alex­ievich told re­porters.

Memo­r­i­al was found­ed in the So­vi­et Union in 1987 to en­sure the vic­tims of com­mu­nist re­pres­sion would be re­mem­bered. It has con­tin­ued to com­pile in­for­ma­tion on hu­man rights abus­es and track the fate of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Rus­sia. The coun­try’s high­est court or­dered it shut down in De­cem­ber, the lat­est move in a re­lent­less crack­down on rights ac­tivists, in­de­pen­dent me­dia and op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers.

Tatyana Glushko­va, a board mem­ber of the Memo­r­i­al Hu­man Rights De­fense Cen­ter, said one of the rea­sons the Krem­lin views the group as a threat is be­cause it un­der­stands and in­forms peo­ple about the “par­al­lels be­tween Putin’s regime and the So­vi­et regime.”

Glushko­va not­ed the award was hand­ed to the group on the day it once again had to ap­pear in court in Moscow — this time on a case re­lat­ed to its of­fice build­ing in cen­tral Moscow.

Oleg Orlov, member of Russian human rights group Memorial, attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Orlov is a member of the council of Russian human rights organisation Memorial, one of the two organisations awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties and with the jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

The Cen­ter for Civ­il Lib­er­ties was found­ed in 2007 to pro­mote hu­man rights and democ­ra­cy in Ukraine dur­ing a pe­ri­od of tur­moil in the coun­try. Fol­low­ing Rus­sia’s in­va­sion in Feb­ru­ary, the group has worked to doc­u­ment Russ­ian war crimes against Ukrain­ian civil­ians.

“The Cen­ter is play­ing a pi­o­neer­ing role with a view to hold­ing the guilty par­ties ac­count­able for their crimes,” Reiss-An­der­sen said.

A re­searcher at the Cen­ter, Volodymyr Ya­vorskyi, said the award was im­por­tant for the or­ga­ni­za­tion be­cause “for many years we worked in a coun­try that was in­vis­i­ble.”

“Hu­man rights ac­tiv­i­ty is the main weapon against the war,” said Ya­vorskyi, who is mar­ried to a Be­laru­sian and lived in the Be­laru­sian cap­i­tal, Min­sk, un­til May 2021, when he was ex­pelled along with his 9-year-old son. He is barred from en­ter­ing Be­larus for 10 years and said law en­force­ment beat him dur­ing in­ter­ro­ga­tions.

The prize car­ries a cash award of 10 mil­lion Swedish kro­nor (near­ly $900,000) and will be hand­ed out on Dec. 10. The mon­ey comes from a be­quest left by the prize’s cre­ator, Swedish in­ven­tor Al­fred No­bel, in 1895.

Olav Njoel­stad, the sec­re­tary of the prize com­mit­tee, told the AP that if Biali­ats­ki is un­able to re­ceive the award in per­son, he can ask a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to col­lect it for him, like Pol­ish win­ner Lech Wale­sa did in 1983. Oth­er­wise, the com­mit­tee might choose to sym­bol­i­cal­ly place an emp­ty chair on the stage, like it did when im­pris­oned Chi­nese rights ac­tivist Liu Xi­aobo won in 2010. —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

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Sto­ry by HAN­NA ARHI­RO­VA, FRANK JOR­DANS and VANES­SA GERA of As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Frank Jor­dans re­port­ed from Berlin. Vanes­sa Gera re­port­ed from War­saw, Poland.

Har­ri­et Mor­ris and Yuras Kar­manau in Tallinn, Es­to­nia; Karl Rit­ter in Stock­holm; John Leices­ter in Le Pecq, France, and Boubkar Ben­ze­bat in Paris con­tributed to this sto­ry.