Communications coordinator, CAPS Unlock
Peter Leonard is the Communications Coordinator at CAPS Unlock, a think tank based in Kazakhstan, and the editor of Havli, a Substack newsletter focusing on current affairs in Central Asia.
Previously, Peter served as the Central Asia editor for Eurasianet, a news and analysis website covering underreported areas of the former Soviet Union. Before that, he was the Ukraine correspondent for the Associated Press, where he directed coverage of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine. He also worked as head of the English-language desk of RIA Novosti during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, a period marked by tentative liberalization in Russia.
Earlier in his career, Peter spent five years as the Associated Press’s Central Asia correspondent, covering major events such as the 2010 revolution in Kyrgyzstan and other significant regional developments.
Beyond journalism, he has translated The Dreamtime, a novel by Ukrainian war reporter and filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov. Peter studied Russian language and literature at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies in London and later earned a postgraduate degree in Russian Studies from the University of Oxford.