Ryhor Astapenia

Ryhor Astapenia is founder and research director of the Centre for New Ideas, a Minsk-based think tank promoting democratic reforms in Belarus. He received his PhD in Political Science at the University of Warsaw and previously worked as a development director and analyst at the Ostrogorski Centre, a Belarusian think tank.

Ryhor is a frequent panellist at events on Belarusian foreign policy and domestic politics. He has cooperated with a number of civil society organisations in Eastern Europe and has written for Belarusian and Western media outlets and think tanks, including the Washington Post, the Guardian, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.