page_title: Andrey Piontkovsky
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Andrey Piontkovsky / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Андрей Пионтковский
context_page_description: Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is Russian scientist and political writer and analyst, a member of International PEN Club. He is a former member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council.
context_section_description: He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics.
  He was an Executive Director of the Strategic Studies Center (Moscow) think tank that has been closed since 2006.  He contributes regularly to Novaya Gazeta, The Moscow Times, The Russia Journal and the online journals Grani.ru and Transitions Online. He is also a regular political commentator for the BBC World Service and Radio Liberty in Moscow. He has been an outspoken critic of Putin's "managed" democracy in Russia and, as such, has described Russia as a "soft totalitarian regime" and "hybrid fascism."
  Piontkovsky is a member of the American Mathematical Society.
  Piontkovsky is the author of several books on the Putin presidency in Russia, including his most recent book, Another Look Into Putin's Soul.
  Piontkovsky is one of the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin manifesto "Putin Must Go", published on 10 March 2010. In his subsequent articles he has repeatedly stressed its importance and urged citizens to sign it.
  On 26 June 2013, Piontkovsky commented the case of Edward Snowden by saying, "If Pushkov dares to draw a parallel between Snowden and Soviet dissidents, I must respond that none of them had anything to do with Soviet special services and none of them pledged not to betray state and departmental secrets."
  Piontkovsky compared the Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin in 2014 to Hitler's speech on Sudetenland in 1939. He described Putin as using "the same arguments and vision of history" and beyond that, that this speech played a key role in starting the war in Donbass.
  In 2016 he published an article "Бомба, готовая взорваться" ("A bomb that is ready to explode") about Russian-Chechen ethnic conflict. When the General Prosecutor Office found his article "extremist" and started criminal prosecution  Piontkovsky at last left Russia on 19 February 2016.
caption: Piontkovsky, 16 January 2013
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