Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov said Thursday that “the world must hear this sound” of the Kremlin’s war on Kyiv following an incident where Ukrainian journalists played the sound of an air-raid warning during his speech earlier this week.
Muratov, the chief editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was speaking earlier this week at the Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany when his speech was interrupted by the sound of an air-raid siren.
“Ukrainian journalists turned on the air-raid alarm on their smartphones. Standing on the podium, I thought it was a technical problem. No, it was not a technical problem. If I knew, I’d have interrupted the speech and asked for the sound of the siren to be amplified,” Muratov said in a statement published by Novaya Gazeta.
“The world needs to hear this sound of war, and for this, any place is appropriate,” Muratov said, adding that he has no complaints and treated the incident with “understanding.”
During his speech in Bonn, Muratov said that one of the results of the war was that “never again will Ukraine and Russia be together,” and that “these peoples will never be fraternal peoples.”
Muratov also spoke about the media landscape in Russia, domestic repressions and political prisoners.
Novaya Gazeta, whose war coverage did not follow the Kremlin’s narrative of the conflict, was forced to suspend publication shortly after the February 2022 invasion.
Last year Muratov, a vocal critic of the war in Ukraine, auctioned off his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize gold medal for $103.5 million to benefit children displaced by the invasion.
