Taras Kuzio

He has been frequent interviewed by television, radio and print media, including during the Euromaidan, Russian invasion of the Crimea and the Donbas conflict. Over a 3-decade journalistic career he has authored 1,400 articles on post-communist, Ukrainian and Russian politics for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, United Press International and specialist publications published by Jane’s Information Group and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty.

Dr. Kuzio has guest edited 12 special issues of academic journals, including Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Society, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Ukrainian Studies and Communist and Post-Communist Studies, including a March 2016 edition on Russian authoritarianism and nationalism. He has authored over 100 think tank monographs, including a 2010 monograph on Russia and the Crimea, book chapters, and scholarly articles on post-communist, Ukrainian and Russian politics and nationalism.

His most recent book Ukraine: Democratisation, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (June 2015) surveys modern Ukrainian political history. He is the author and editor of fifteen books, including Open Ukraine. Changing Course towards a European Future Democratic Revolution in Ukraine (2011), From Kuchmagate to Orange Revolution (2007), Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism (2007) and Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict (2007).

In 2004-2006 he was a Visiting Professor in George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs' Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES). In 2010-2011, he was an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Visiting Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington D.C. In 2011-2012 he was a visiting fellow at the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University in Japan. Currently he is a Senior Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta where he is writing a book on the Ukraine-Russia crisis and Donbas conflict.

From 1998-1999 he was director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. He served as a long-term observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe during the 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections in Ukraine and as a National Democratic Institute observer in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections.

As part of the CIA QRPLUMB Project, in 1986, Kuzio began compiling and translating information on current events in Soviet Ukraine and provided this information to the media through the Ukraine Press Agency (UPA) in Great Britain. UPA was a branch of the officially registered Society for Soviet Nationalities Studies which published the bi-monthly "Soviet Nationalities Survey" and monthly "Soviet Ukrainian Affairs". In 1992-1993, Taras Kuzio worked as a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. From 1993-1995 he served as editor of the Ukrainian Business Review and directed the Ukrainian Business Agency. From 1995-1998 he was a senior research fellow with the Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Birmingham in England where he completed his PhD on nation and state building in Ukraine. In the second half of the 1990s he was a senior research fellow at the Council of Advisers to the Ukrainian Parliament.

Taras Kuzio (born 1958 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England) is a British academic and expert in Ukrainian political, economic and security affairs. In 2010 he predicted the Russian annexation of Crimea that would result from the ousting of President Yanukovych. He has British citizenship, but is based in Toronto, Canada.