Anders Åslund

Åslund's work in Ukraine made him a vocal critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Åslund was a member of the supervisory board of the Ukrainian Railways from June 2018 until September 2020, when he was "fired" by President Zelensky. Zelenskyy commented on the resignation of UZ Aslund, a member of the supervisory board. He claimed he resigned because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and members of the Ukrainian parliament "do not believe in good corporate governance." Åslund claimed that the foreign members of the supervisory boards of 13 large state-owned companies "receive only insults and obstacles from the president."

In 2016, Åslund was appointed to the supervisory board of Ukraine's 23rd largest bank, Kredyt Dnipro, owned by Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk.

His work focuses on economic transition from centrally planned to market economies. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine and from 2003 was director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Åslund was an advocate of early, comprehensive, and radical economic reforms in Russia and Eastern Europe. He worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2006 to 2015. In 2013, David Frum wrote that “Anders Aslund at the Peterson Institute is one of the world’s leading experts on the collapse of the planned Soviet economy.” From 2010 to 2013 and again in 2022 he contributed to The Moscow Times, an independent English-language newspaper; he is also a long-time contributor to the Kyiv Post.

After his experiences in Russia, Åslund worked as an economic advisor to President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine from 1994 to 1997, and from 1998 to 2004, to President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan. Åslund has also worked substantially with economic policy in the Baltic countries, first as a member of the International Baltic Economic Commission from 1991 to 1993, and later as an informal advisor to Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis from 2009. (Dombrovskis was prime minister until 2014.)

From November 1991 to January 1994, Åslund worked with Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton as a senior advisor to the Russian reform government under President Boris Yeltsin and Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. He worked also with Deputy Prime Ministers Anatoly Chubais and Boris Fedorov. Åslund summarized his views in his book How Russia Became a Market Economy.

On 22 April 1990 Åslund published a controversial article on Dagens Nyheter, drawing parallels between the collapsing communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the social democratic policies in Sweden. He argued that Sweden had too large a public sector; supported communist dictatorships, such as Cuba, in the Third World; and had excessive state intervention in all areas of life. The ruling Swedish Social Democratic Party opposed the views of Åslund in dozens of articles. In June 1990, Social Democratic Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson voiced public disagreement with Åslund in the Riksdag. However, opposition leader Carl Bildt (Moderate Party) defended Åslund.

From 1989 to 1994, Åslund worked as a Professor of International Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics; and in 1989 he became the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics.

Per Anders Åslund (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈânːdɛʂ ˈoːslɵnd]; born 17 February 1952) is a Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is also a chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE).