By Iona Cleave

 

OSLO, 10 Oct. - (ANA) - Vladimir Putin has suggested that Donald Trump is too good for the Nobel Peace Prize after the US president was snubbed for the award.

 

Mr Trump, who brokered the deal to end the Gaza War, lost out after the Nobel committee voted to hand the award to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition politician in hiding.

 

The president and his supporters had lobbied for him to win the prize after securing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and for the part he claims to have played in ending seven other conflicts during his second term.

 

Putin said Mr Trump was “truly doing a lot to resolve complex crises” and the award had “lost credibility”, adding: “I don’t know whether the current US president deserves a Nobel Prize. But he’s truly doing a lot to resolve complex crises that last for years, even decades.

 

“He’s definitely trying, he’s definitely working on these issues, on achieving peace and resolving complex international situations. The most striking example is the situation in the Middle East. If Donald can achieve everything he’s strived for, everything he’s talked about and is trying to accomplish, it will be a historic event.

 

“But, I repeat, it is not for me to decide whether this is worthy of a prize or not, and whether this prize is worthy of achievements of this kind. That said, the credibility has largely been lost.”

 

In response, Mr Trump thanked the Russian leader in a public post on his Truth Social network. The White House reacted to Mr Trump missing out on the 2025 by accusing the committee of choosing “politics over peace”.

 

Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, said: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

 

Ms Machado was honoured “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the committee, in Oslo.

 

Mr Frydnes added that Ms Machado - who has been nicknamed Venezuela’s “Iron Lady” - was a “unifying figure” and one of “the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”.

 

After her victory had been announced, Ms Machado acknowledged Mr Trump, praising him for supporting Venezuela.

 

She said: “This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom.

 

”We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.

 

”I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

 

The Nobel Peace Prize committee’s role is to choose a person - or group - that has done the most to “promote fraternity between nations”, in keeping with the will of the award’s founder Alfred Nobel.

 

Two days before the committee announced a winner, Mr Trump declared he had secured “peace in the Middle East” after brokering the agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the two-year conflict.

 

At the 11th hour, Mr Trump’s campaign received a spate of late backers, and his allies went into overdrive to help win him the award. But despite the president claiming also to have ended “seven unendable wars”, it was not enough.

 

Ms Machado has emerged as one of the strongest and most critical voices denouncing Nicolás Maduro’s regime and its campaign of repression. Her powerful social movement brought thousands to the streets before the election last year and she was banned from standing against Maduro.

 

Edmundo González Urrutia, a relatively unknown opposition candidate, won about 70 per cent of the vote, but Maduro declared victory and refused to hand over power. After the election, Maduro’s forces crushed protests and arrested opposition figures.

 

Mr González fled into exile in Spain, while Ms Machado went into hiding in Venezuela. She has not been seen in public since January, leaving her refuge only on a handful of occasions, and has not seen her three children in months.

 

Mr González called her win a “very well-deserved recognition for the long fight of a woman and of a whole people for our freedom and democracy”. He posted a video of himself speaking by phone with Ms Machado on Friday. “I am in shock,” she said, adding, “I cannot believe it.”

 

Ms Machado told Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Nobel Institute, she was confident the opposition would succeed in securing a peaceful transition to democracy in her country.

 

“We’re not there yet. We’re working very hard to achieve it, but I’m sure that we will prevail,” she told Mr Harpviken when he called to inform her that she had won the prize.

 

“This is certainly the biggest recognition to our people [who] certainly deserve it,” she said, adding: “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve it.”

 

Mr Trump has been outspoken in his desire for a prize won by four of his predecessors, Barack Obama in 2009, Jimmy Carter in 2002, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

 

With the exception of Carter, they each won the award while in office, with Mr Obama honoured less than eight months into his presidency.

 

In his first term in office, Mr Trump brokered what are known as the Abraham Accords, normalisation deals between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan.

 

The five-strong committee, however, would have probably chosen its winner long before the Gaza ceasefire agreement, after months of deliberations. Its final meeting was held on Monday, two days before Mr Trump announced that the first phase of the peace deal had been agreed.

 

 

 

 

Those with knowledge of the Nobel process had said that a Trump win was extremely unlikely, citing what they saw as his efforts to dismantle the post-Second World War international world order, which the Nobel committee cherishes.

 

Nina Graeger, head of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and the 2015 Paris climate accords, and his trade war with allies, went against the spirit of Nobel’s 1895 will.

 

“If you look at Alfred Nobel’s will, it emphasises three areas: one is the achievements regarding peace – brokering a peace deal,” she said. “The other is to work and promote disarmament and the third is to promote international cooperation.”

 

Asle Sveen, a historian of the award, said Mr Trump’s attempted rapprochement with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, would have counted against him. “His admiration of dictators also counts against him,” Sveen said. “This goes against Alfred Nobel’s will.”

 

Mr Harpviken, the committee secretary, who participates in all the deliberations of the five-strong panel but does not vote, said the award was not intended for last-minute achievements.

 

“This is a prize primarily for work done in 2024 and prior years,” Mr Harpviken told the broadcaster NRK on Friday. “It’s not a prize for the work done in the most recent weeks or months.”

 

Last year’s award went to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grass-roots movement of atomic-bomb survivors, who have advocated for the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

 

Insiders say the award follows a year-long process, during which the committee debates the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

 

Nominations for the prize must reach the committee by Jan 31. Committee members can also make nominations before the committee’s first meeting in February. Thereafter, the committee meets about once a month. The decision tends to be taken in August or September.

 

The Nobel committee says it is used to working under pressure from people, or their supporters, who say they deserve the prize. Mr Frydnes told Reuters: “All politicians want to win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

 

A favourite to win this year had been Emergency Response Rooms, a community-led network in Sudan that is the backbone of the country’s humanitarian response to its civil war.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/10 October 2025  - - -