Exclusive - Pioneering Russian journalist sells Nobel Peace medal for Ukraine

FILE PHOTO: Nobel Peace Prize co-winner 2021 Dmitry Muratov attends a ceremony for World Press Freedom day at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

(Reuters) - Russian journalist and Nobel Peace laureate Dmitry Muratov is auctioning his Nobel medal for Ukrainian refugees, distraught at the eradication of independent media in his country, where he says fewer and fewer people support Moscow's military campaign.

Muratov is the bear-like co-founder and long-time editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper critical of the Kremlin that was itself established in 1993 with money from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's Nobel Peace Prize.