Citing Efforts to Prevent Attack on Syria, Group Nominates Putin for Peace Prize MOSCOW - He is credited with commanding a war to crush separatism in Chechnya, approving a full-scale attack on Georgia over a minor border dispute and complaining when NATO led an air war in Libya to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from killing thousands of Libyans. And he is still selling weapons to the murderous government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Nevertheless, seizing on his proposal to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons stockpile and forestall a missile strike that had been threatened by President Obama, a Russian advocacy group said on Tuesday that it had nominated President Vladimir V. Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize. Members of the group, called the International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World, said at a news conference here on Tuesday that Mr. Putin was far more deserving of the peace prize than Mr. Obama, who received it in 2009 but has continued to lead American military operations - including drone strikes that have killed civilians and American citizens abroad. By contrast, they portrayed Mr. Putin, who has steadfastly opposed military intervention throughout the two-and-a-half year-old civil war in Syria, as a man who favors diplomatic solutions. "Barack Obama has the title of Nobel Prize winner - the man who initiated and approved such aggressive actions on the part of the United States of America as in Iraq, Afghanistan, some others, and now is preparing for invasion of Syria," Iosif Kobzon, a popular Russian singer and a member of Parliament, said at the news conference. I think our president, who is trying to stop the bloodshed, who is trying to help to resolve this conflict situation through a political dialogue, through diplomatic language, deserves this title more. Critics of Mr. Putin say that Russia, at his direction, has extended a lifeline to the Assad government, an old ally, and repeatedly used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to block international action that could have stemmed the violence in Syria and prevented the deaths of more than 100,000 civilians. Mr. Putin has insisted that the Syrian rebels bear equal responsibility for the violence and that, under international law, Syria's sovereignty must be respected. Although the group announced its plans on Tuesday, it sent a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee formally proposing Mr. Putin as a candidate for the Peace Prize on Sept. 16, two days after Russia and the United States reached an agreement in Geneva on a plan for Syria's surrender of its chemical arms. "Being the leader of one of the leading nations of the world, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin makes efforts to maintain peace and tranquillity not only on the territory of his own country but also actively promotes settlement of all conflicts arising on the planet," the group wrote. The 2013 Peace Prize recipient will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 11; nominations for this year's prize had to be postmarked by Feb. 1. Mr. Putin would not be the first formerly war-waging leader to win the Peace Prize. The Israeli prime minister and former general, Yitzhak Rabin, shared it in 1994 with the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, who was long accused of terrorism. Mr. Putin is also not the only Russian resident to be nominated this year for a major international prize. Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has received temporary asylum here, is among the nominees for the Sakharov Prize, which is awarded by the European Parliament to honor supporters of human rights and free expression. Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the jailed former Yukos Oil tycoon and a political opponent of Mr. Putin's, was also nominated for the Sakharov award.