A Russian advocacy group nominated Vladimir Putin – the chief arms supplier of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime during the Syrian civil war – for the Nobel Peace Prize because of his plan to dismantle Assad’s poison gas stockpile.
Putin is far more deserving than President Obama, winner of the 2009 peace prize, because his Syrian plan averted “a new world war,” members of the group told reporters in Moscow.
“Barack Obama is the man who has initiated and approved the United States’ aggressive actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he is preparing for an invasion into Syria,” said Iosif Kobzon, a prominent popular singer and Putin loyalist. “Our president, who tries to stop the bloodshed and who tries to help the conflict situation with political dialogue, is in my view more worthy of this high title.”
His group, which lists senior Russian officials, including a former prime minister and the first woman cosmonaut in space among its members, said they wrote the Norwegian Nobel Committee officially nominating Putin two weeks ago.
Putin, who launched a border war on Georgia and crushed Chechen rebels in his own country, played the rare role of peacemaker last month by convincing Obama to drop plans for missile strikes and agree to the gradual dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.
Kobzon said his group, the International Academy of Spiritual Unity of Peoples of the World, did not consult Putin before nominating him and said he probably wouldn’t comment on the mater “because of his humility.”