President Donald Trump's candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize, state news agency TASS quoted Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov as saying on Friday.
Russia has said repeatedly that it is grateful for Trump's efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in remarks published on Thursday that Kiev would nominate Trump for the Nobel, which he openly covets, if he managed to bring about a ceasefire.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce on Friday who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, a highly coveted but notoriously unpredictable award.
Experts say the committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.
There has been persistent speculation ahead of the announcement about the possibility of the prize going to Trump, fueled in part by the US president himself, but longtime Nobel watchers say his chances remain remote despite notable foreign policy interventions for which he has taken personal credit.
Groups cited as possible winners by the Peace Research Institute Oslo include Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, a community-led network that has become the backbone of the country’s humanitarian response to its civil war; the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; and the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based group that promotes press freedom and compiles a list of journalists killed on duty.
Last year's award went to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Japanese atomic bombing survivors who have worked for decades to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons.
The peace prize is the only one of the annual Nobel prizes to be awarded in Oslo, Norway.
Four of the other prizes have already been awarded in the Swedish capital, Stockholm this week — in medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The winner of the prize in economics will be announced on Monday.
