The journalist's Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov received the Nobel peace prize on Friday at a ceremony that Ressa was almost blocked from attending because of travel restrictions related to legal cases filed against her in the Philippines.

Ressa, 58, the chief executive and co-founder of the online news platform Rappler, praised for exposing abuses of power and growing authoritarianism under the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, is facing charges that could lead to about 100 years in jail. Having been awarded the prize alongside Muratov in October, she was granted permission to attend the ceremony earlier this month by the Philippine court of appeals, which ruled she was not a flight risk.

Muratov, 59, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, who shared the 2021 Nobel peace prize, was described as one of the most prominent defenders of freedom of speech in Russia today. “Novaya Gazeta is the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said at the ceremony at Oslo City Hall.