“Instead of pretentious and hypocritical speeches about ‘freedom,’ they could protect a person who survived the assassination attempt and is now taken hostage by the murderers,” wrote Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager for Mr. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Mr. Muratov is a member of the liberal Yabloko party, which did not support the “smart voting” initiative. That was in part because the app recommended that all opposition forces select one candidate most likely to beat Mr. Putin’s United Russia party. The recommended candidates included many from the Communist Party, an anathema to Mr. Muratov who believed it harkened back to the time of dictator Joseph Stalin.
Mr. Muratov also mounted a defense of Aleksei Venediktov, the editor in chief of the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, who oversaw the controversial online voting platform in the September elections.
Some observers argued that the choice of Novaya Gazeta, which is one of the last independent media outlets in Russia not to be named a “foreign agent,” sent the wrong message at the wrong time.
“The decision to reward Muratov, not Navalny, is an attempt to keep the maximum distance from the current political process,” the political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov wrote on Facebook. “We, they say, do not interfere in politics, we only support the principle of freedom of speech,” he added, referring to the Nobel committee. “This is probably correct.”