Taras Kuzio

Dr. Taras Kuzio (born 1958 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK) is an academic and expert in Ukrainian political, economic and security affairs. He has British citizenship, but is based in Toronto, Canada.

Taras Kuzio received a BA in Economics from the University of Sussex, an MA in Soviet Studies from the University of London and holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Birmingham; he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

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.

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 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections in Ukraine and as a National Democratic Institute observer in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections.

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.

Taras Kuzio has been a consultant to different branches of the US government in the fields of democracy, governance and human rights in Ukraine. He has prepared expert testimony in political asylum cases for lawyers and consultancy on oligarchs, corporate raiding and due diligence for business clients.

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 (2009), Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism (2007) and Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict (2007).

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.

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.

Volumes Authored

• Ukraine: Democratisation, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2015), pp. 611.
• Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism: New Directions in Cross-Cultural and Post-Communist Studies. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society series 71 (Hannover: Ibidem-Verlag, 2007), pp. 423.
• Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict, Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society series (Hannover: Ibidem-Verlag, 2007), pp. 223.
• Ukraine. Perestroika to Independence, Second Edition (London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994 and 2000), pp. 273.
• Ukraine. State and Nation Building. Routledge Studies of Societies in Transition 9 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 298.
• Ukraine under Kuchma: Political Reform, Economic Transformation and Security Policy in Independent Ukraine (London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 281.
• Ukrainian Security Policy. Washington Paper 167 (Washington DC: The Center for Strategic & International Studies and Praeger, 1995), pp. 168.

Volumes Co-Authored

• (with Paul D’Anieri and Robert Krawchuk) Politics and Society in Ukraine. Westview Series on the Post-Soviet Republics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 332.

Think Tank Monographs

• The Crimea: Europe’s Next Flashpoint? (Washington DC: The Jamestown Foundation, November 2010), pp. 38.
• EU and Ukraine: a turning point in 2004? ISS-EU Occasional Paper (Paris: Institute for Security Studies-EU, December 2003), pp. 36.
• Ukraine. Back From the Brink, European Security Study 23 (London: Institute for European Defence and Security Studies, 1995), pp. 39.
• Russia-Crimea-Ukraine. Triangle of Conflict, Conflict Studies 267 (London: Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and terrorism, 1994), pp. 35.
• Ukraine. The Unfinished Revolution. European Security Study 16 (London: Institute for European Defence and Security Studies, 1992), pp. 41.
• Dissent in Ukraine under Gorbachev (A Collection of samizdat documents) (London: Ukrainian Press Agency, 1989), pp. 53.