Quick Facts
Biography
Anton Shekhovtsov (born 1978) is a Ukrainian writer, academic and political activist. He is known for his writings on the European radical right and in particular its alleged connections to Russia. Having worked for the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, he is a supporter of the European Union, NATO and liberal democracy, as well as a noted critic of Vladimir Putin's Russia, particularly the ideology of Neo-Eurasianism and the activities of Aleksander Dugin. He is the editor of the editor of the Explorations of the Far Right book series at ibidem-Verlag and sits on the board of the open source Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies.
Background
Shekhovtsov was born in 1978 in Sevastopol, then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. He got his professional start as a lecturer at the European University of Finance, Information Systems, Management and Business in Kiev between 2000 until 2002 (now known as the EU Business School). He was then a political lecturer at the Sevastopol National Technical University from 2006 until 2010. He was living in the United Kingdom from 2010 until 2012 as a visiting fellow researcher at the University of Northampton as part of the Radicalism and New Media Research Group.
He spent a year in Vienna, Austria working at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. He returned to Kiev in 2015 and worked at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, a political organisation founded by Borys Tarasyuk which advocates the Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union and NATO. In 2015 he worked for the Legatum Institute Foundation in London, a Dubai-based venture capitalist firm which promotes "global prosperity and human liberty."
Shekhovtsov has since returned to the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Aside from these jobs, Shekhovtsov has been promoted by the British-based openDemocracy website. In 2017, he was a speaker at a Chatham House conference on Europe's Strategic Choices. His earlier works have been published by the anti-government SOVA Center in Moscow and the British-based anti-fascist publication Searchlight, published by Gerry Gable. He has also had articles published in Foreign Affairs magazine (the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations), the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. and the Aspen Institute in Central Europe.