Russian police officers stand guard outside the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, 26 March 2025. Photo: EPA
Several Nobel Prize winners have appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, EU leaders and Vladimir Putin to include a clause requiring the pardoning or exchanging of political prisoners in any prospective deal to end the war in Ukraine, Deutsche Welle reported on Monday.
“Any further agreements beneficial to all parties should directly refer to releasing civilian prisoners,” the statement read, adding that the sick, the elderly, women and adolescents should be the first to be pardoned or exchanged. According to Nobel-Prize-winning human rights organisation Memorial, over 1,000 people have been sentenced to prison terms on political grounds in Russia since 2022.
The laureates expressed confidence that if both Putin and Zelensky showed goodwill and pardoned non-violent prisoners who had been sentenced to prison terms merely for expressing their personal opinions, it would “accelerate the onset of a lasting and just peace”.
The statement was signed by the former editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov and Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, who won the prize for literature in 2015, Russian human rights activist Yan Rachinsky, who accepted the peace prize on behalf of Memorial in 2022, and 12 other Nobel laureates.
