Distracted Nobel Peace Prize: the Oslo verdict seems to come from another era

Nothing to complain about the merits of the winners: Ales Bialiatski is a dissident, the Memorial has fought against rights violations in Russia and the Center for Civil Rights of Ukraine has called for a trial against Putin. But there are no more direct signals

“The Nobel Committee has a curious idea of ​​the word ‘peace’, if it awards a prize to the representatives of two countries that have attacked a third together”: it is difficult to invent a more concise summary of the 2022 edition of the Peace Prize than that provided by the advisor to the Ukrainian presidency Mykhailo Podolyak. In the autumn of the most terrible war in Europe’s history since 1945, which has shaken and overturned the foundations of 80 years of peace on the continent, finding a suitable candidate didn’t seem difficult, and all eyes were on the east. After the most obvious candidate led with great detachment on the eve of betting, Volodymyr Zelenskyfollowed by Alexei Navalny and by the Ukrainian people as a whole, from Oslo came a verdict that even before leaving disappointed seems to come from another era, where the awards are weighed and sipped by bureaucracies “equidistant”, and above all very distant from the life and death of thousands of people, in a war that the Nobel Committee seems not to have noticed. Nothing to complain about the merits and commitment of the three winners.