Peter Leonard is the Central Asia editor with Eurasianet, a news and analysis website focusing on underreported areas of the former Soviet Union.
Prior to taking up this job, he was the Ukraine correspondent for the Associated Press news agency. During that stint, he directed coverage of Russian’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine. Previous positions have included a job as head of the English-language desk of RIA Novosti, during the interregnum of President Dmitry Medvedev, as Russia was seemingly engaging in a tentative experiment in liberalization.
An earlier stint with the Associated Press saw Peter working for five years as the agency’s Central Asia correspondent, during which time he covered the 2010 revolution in Kyrgyzstan and other turbulent developments in the region at the time.
Away from journalism, his other professional activities have included translating a Ukrainian novel, The Dreamtime, written by war reporter and documentary filmmaker Msytslyav Chernov.
He studied Russian language and literature at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies in London and later completed a post-graduate degree in Russian Studies at the University of Oxford.