Norwegian Police Security Service accused Russia of involving intelligence services to interfere in the work of the Nobel committee, according to NRK.
In particular, Norway believes that Russia was trying to prevent the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in 2015.
The security service reported that in order to discredit a possible Peace Prize to a laureate in summer of 2015, the letter of the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Volodymyr Groysman to the US charge d’affaires in Norway was published on the internet. The letter stated that US diplomats received the support of two of the five members of the Nobel Committee, but “it is essential to obtain guarantees” on award for the president Poroshenko.
As NRK states, the US Embassy and the Verkhovna Rada claimed that Groysman’s leter was fake.
Two weeks after the publication of the letter, two representatives of the Russian Embassy came in the office of the secretary of the committee and the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute Olav Njølstad. According to Njølstad, it was “absurd” meeting, after which he contacted the Police Security Service.
Officer of the Police Security Service reported to NRK that the Norwegian security services found out that “one of the diplomats, who came to the meeting with Njølstad, was an officer of the Foreign Russian Intelligence Service.” According to him, this visit was an operation to influence the decision of a committee member.
It is noteworthy that the Russian Embassy disagreed with these conclusions, stating that “the attempt of the Police Security Service to display routine diplomatic work as intelligence services operation seems paranoid to the representatives of the Embassy.”
Earlier, in 2015, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for the democratization of the country after the revolution.
