Nobel winners will each receive $1.1million this year after organisers raised the prize money

Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The leader was put forward by a group of Russian writers led by Sergey Komkov, according to Russian news agency TASS.

They submitted the application in Oslo on September 10, putting him alongside Donald Trump in the list of potential candidates for the prestigious award.

A presidential spokesman said Putin, who was also nominated in 2013, was not put forward by the Kremlin. 

The favourite to win this year’s Peace Prize is the World Health Organisation, with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Greta Thunberg also fancied.

Nominations can be submitted by anyone who meets the Nobel Committee’s criteria, which includes lawmakers anywhere in the world, professors and academic groups.

Trump was nominated by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, an ultra-conservative member of the Norwegian Parliament, who praised Trump for brokering a deal between the UAE and Israel.

Reality star Gemma Collins was put forward by two YouTube pranksters, who have started up The Romford Research Institute For Peace to make themselves qualify to have the power to nominate. 

It comes as it was also revealed on Thursday that winners of the Nobel prizes will receive an extra 1 million Swedish krona ($110,000) this year. 

The head of the foundation which oversees the awards said the prize money will increase to 10 million crowns this year ($1.1 million), daily Dagens Industri reported.

Lars Heikensten said: ‘The decision has been made due to the fact that our costs and capital are in a stable relation in a completely different way than previously.’

Dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel left around 31 million crowns – about 1.8 billion crowns in today’s money according to the Foundation – to fund the prizes, which have been awarded since 1901.

The prize amount has varied over time, starting at 150,000 crowns and reaching 1 million crowns in 1981. 

The value rose sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, jumping to 9 million crowns in 2000 and 10 million a year later.

But the global credit crunch of 2008-9 hit the Foundation’s investments and Heikensten, a former central bank chief, was brought in to get its finances in order.

The prize money was cut to 8 million crowns in 2012 only to rise again to 9 million in 2017.

Heikensten will step down at the end of this year to be replaced by former Norwegian foreign minister Vidar Helgesen.

He said the Foundation would continue to raise the amount of the prize money ‘from time to time’. 

Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23-carat gold, and later in 18-carat green gold plated with a 24-carat gold coating.

Five awards are handed out to laureates every year, in peace, literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. 

An additional award for economics was also set up in 1968 as a Nobel Memorial prize, but as it was not one of the categories established by Alfred Nobel in his will, it does not officially count as a Nobel Prize.

This year, Donald Trump has been nominated for the prize in the wake of diplomatic breakthroughs between Israel and Gulf Arab countries. 

The US President was nominated for a second time for his work in securing a deal between Kosovo and Serbia, two former Balkan war foes.

Swedish parliament member Magnus Jacobsson tweeted that he nominated the governments of the United States, Serbia and Kosovo ‘for their joint work for peace and economic development, through the cooperation agreement signed in the White House. Trade and communications are important building blocks for peace.’

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti signed an economic normalization deal at the White House last week that also calls for Belgrade to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and for mutual recognition by Israel and Kosovo.