Photo Olga Ivashchenko
Oliver Carroll is a staff correspondent for The Economist, previously Moscow correspondent for The Independent, and a contributor to Newsweek, Politico, the Times of London, Die Zeit, Foreign Policy, the Daily Beast, BBC, Sky and others.
Hailing from Birkenhead, a shipbuilding town near Liverpool, Oliver has spent most of the last two decades focussed on Russia, Ukraine, and the post-Soviet space. He first moved to Moscow in 2004, soon after graduating from Cambridge University with a BA in Russian studies. There, he became a founding editor of the Russian version of Esquire — a cult magazine that came to be considered a watershed publication for the local media industry.
Four years later, Oliver was back in the UK as lead editor of openDemocracy Russia, the post-Soviet section of openDemocracy.net.
Russian Esquire, photos Dmitry Barbanel
In February 2014, Oliver returned east, to Ukraine, then in the midst of revolution. Over the months that followed, he produced in-depth, breaking coverage of the country's enveloping political and military crisis. Oliver wrote extensively on the war in eastern Ukraine, reporting from both sides of the front-lines.
From 2015-2017, Oliver was Managing Editor of the Moscow Times.