The ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran won’t be invited to this year’s Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm after all, following a backlash.
“We recognize the strong reactions in Sweden,” the organization based in the Swedish capital said in a statement on Saturday. “The board of the Nobel Foundation, therefore, choose to repeat last year’s exception to regular practice — that is, to not invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran.”
Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, called the decision “the victory of humanism” in a Facebook post.
The foundation announced on Thursday that it would invite the representatives of the three countries, reverting to a practice dating from before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In doing so, the foundation said it sought to impart “the values and messages that the Nobel Prize stands for,” as it said it did by awarding the 2022 Peace Prize to human rights advocates from Russia and Belarus as well as to Ukrainians who document Russian war crimes.
The coveted annual prizes will be announced Oct. 2 to Oct. 9 and the prize banquet in Stockholm is slated for Dec. 10.
All ambassadors will still be welcome at a separate ceremony in Oslo, also on Dec. 10, to mark this year’s peace prize, the foundation said.
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(With assistance from Niclas Rolander.)