Bendarzsevszkij Anton

Anton Bendarjevskiy (Anton Bendarzsevszkij) was born in Belarus, Minsk, in 1985, living in Hungary since 1995. Anton was studying at the University of Pécs, and has an MA degree in History and MA in Media and Communications. In 2009 he was also studying Political Science at the University of Leicester. Currently, Anton is completing his PhD degree at the Geopolitical PhD program at the University Pécs, Faculty of Geography. The topic of his PhD: “From Belovezh to Eurasian Union: integration processes in the post-Soviet region”.

In 2006-2007 Anton was doing an internship as a reporter at the regional studio of Hungarian National Television, MTV. In addition to his managerial experience in the business sector (IBM, Priceline Group), between 2009-2016, he was a journalist of the biggest Hungarian foreign policy news portal, Kitekintő, which had 40 000 readers daily. Between 2009-2016 Anton was leading the post-soviet department at Kitekintő. As the editor of Kitekintő, he has written over five hundred articles and analyses and had publications in different other online and print media.

Between 2015-2019 Anton was the director of Pallas Athene Innovation and Geopolitical Foundation (PAIGEO), the organisation created by the Central Bank of Hungary, and led the Foundation’s Research Institute, whose primary focus area was mainly Eastern Asia. PAIGEO has become one of the most important Hungarian research organisations during that time, supporting geopolitical research on academic and scholarly level; supporting geopolitical book publishing; operating its own geopolitical PhD program with two major Hungarian universities (the University of Corvinus and University of Pécs), with nearly 150 PhD students combined; preparing publications and analyses published on www.geopolitika.hu and in several Hungarian media outlets; publishing a geopolitical magazine on quarterly basis called Hungarian Geopolitics (HUG) and organising conferences and academic events.

Between 2020-2021 Anton was writing for the foreign desk of one of the biggest Hungarian daily newspaper, Magyar Nemzet, and since 2021 he is publishing regularly on Index.hu – biggest Hungarian online news portal. His op-ed articles are also published in Mandiner – weekly Hungarian magazine. From November 2020, he was heading the geopolitical research group of Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank established in 2013, later becoming  Director of Research at Danube Institute, the position he held until September 2022.. Currently Anton is the director of Oeconomus Economic Research Institute, responsible for content, strategy and research.

Anton specialises in the internal- and foreign policy of post-soviet countries, focusing on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and energy security and security politics. He is a regular guest of different international conferences and forums dealing with these topics. Since 2011 he is providing regular expertise on Hungarian media outlets as an expert of post-soviet countries.