Our Team

Community Development and Outreach Coordinator

Dmitry has been among organizers of numerous street rallies in New York and Washington, D.C. against Putin’s government, its actions in Ukraine and Syria, and in support of political prisoners in Russia. With other activists in the U.S., Dmitry has advocated for greater accountability for human rights abusers in Russia. In 2018, Dmitry became a coordinator at Free Russia Foundation.

Director, Prague Chapter

Ms. Kurochkina is an award-winning journalist, editor and documentary film producer based in Prague, the Czech Republic. Her work has focused on the Kremlin’s propaganda, disinformation war and influence campaigns against Europe. Since 2014, she has coordinated international cultural and educational initiatives in support of democratic developments in Russia.

Director, South Caucasus

Media manager and political expert from Russia based in Tbilisi, Georgia since 2012. He started his career at the Echo of Moscow. He is a recently appointed representative for Deutsche Welle on South Caucasus, as well as director for media project: “Information in Russian VS Soft Power of the Kremlin” project. For two years he has been producing a famous talk-show “Border Zone,” where he discusses regional conflicts, foreign policy of Russia as well as NATO and EU politics on the post-Soviet space.

Senior Fellow

Anton Shekhovtsov is a Lecturer at the University of Vienna, an expert at the European Platform for Democratic Elections, and General Editor of the “Explorations of the Far Right” book series at ibidem-Verlag. His main area of expertise is the European Far Right, relations between Russia and radical right-wing parties in the West, and illiberal tendencies in Central and Eastern Europe. He is the author of books New Radical Right-Wing Parties in European Democracies (2011) and Russia and the Western Far Right ( 2017); and co-editor of The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right (2014). 

Senior Fellow

Prior to joining Free Russia’s team he was a Bosch Fellow at Chatham House, UK. He heads Free Speech, LLC which runs projects on export of corrosive practices from post-Soviet states to the West. In the last decade he has advised US, UK and French due diligence companies and policy-makers on oligarchs, sanctions, corruption and hydrocarbons. Until his departure from Russia in 2010 he was an adviser on energy and climate change in BP’s subsidiary. He writes on Eurasian energy and kleptocracy for FRF and for its partners at leading US and European think tanks. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford and BI Norwegian Business School.

Director for Special Investigations

Michael Weiss is editor-at-large at The Daily Beast. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror and of The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money. He is currently overseeing The Lubyanka Files project, which consists of translating and curating KGB training manuals still used in modern Russia for the purposes of educating Vladimir Putin’s spies.

Vice President,
Programs and Development

Grigory worked for a variety of leading Russian nonprofits including The Civic Assistance Committee, Greenpeace Russia and Golos Association for Fair Elections, where he was responsible for development and external relations. He holds MPA degree from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Grigory was awarded with both a Fulbright Scholarship and Muskie Scholarship.

Vice President, Global Operations

Prior to joining Free Russia, she had worked at three prominent D.C. think-tanks: as Vice President for Development and Communications at the Potomac Foundation working on the transatlantic security issues, with an emphasis on the Baltic region and Ukraine (2015-2017); as Director of Public Affairs at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where she led outreach efforts to the Pentagon, the U.S. Congress, the media and the defense industry (2006-2015); and as Assistant Director for Congress and U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (2005-2006).

Vice President

Russian democracy activist, politician, author, and filmmaker. Vladimir was a longtime colleague of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and chairs the Nemtsov Foundation. He has led successful international efforts to commemorate Nemtsov, including with street designations in Washington D.C. and Vilnius. He played a key role in the passage of Magnitsky Laws that imposed targeted sanctions on Russian human rights violators in the U.S., Canada, and several EU countries. Vladimir is a contributing writer to the Washington Post and hosts a weekly show on Echo of Moscow radio.