New York: The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees was sold Monday night for $103.5 million, shattering the old record for the coveted award.

Heritage Auctions tweeted that Muratov "auctioned his 2021 Nobel Prize to benefit UNICEF's child refugee fund. It sold for $103,500,000." All the proceeds from the auction, which concluded on World Refugee Day.

"Right now, the award is an opportunity for me to share it with people," Muratov said before the auction, urging people around the world to join the cause and make their contributions.

According to Heritage Auctions description of the medal put up for sale, Norwegian Nobel Institute director Olav Njølstad supported the auction, calling it a "generous act of humanitarianism."

Previously, the most ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his. Three years later, the family of his co-recipient, Francis Crick, received $2.27 million in bidding also run by Heritage Auctions.

Latest figures show there have been more than 7.7 million border crossings from Ukraine, with more than 5 million refugees from Ukraine recorded across Europe since Russia's invasion in late February, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

In an appeal for donations, UNICEF says that the 7.5 million children of Ukraine have been deeply affected by the ongoing conflict, including being separated from family, lacking basic supplies and resources, and facing the daily threat of explosives.