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. Anton has started (but didn’t finish it yet) a PhD program 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 he was the director of Pallas Athene Innovation and Geopolitical Foundation (PAIGEO), the organization founded by the Central Bank of Hungary. He was also leading the Foundation’s Research Institute, publishing articles and policy papers in the foundation’s magazines and website, supporting Hungarian geopolitical research and higher education, and organizing conferences and other academic events. 

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. Established in 2019, the Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation aims to support strategic decision-making in Hungary and the broader region through high-quality research that seamlessly integrates economic and geopolitical perspectives. The foundation operates as an independent professional think tank, featuring its own research agenda, a transparent expert network, and a business model rooted in knowledge transfer. Each year, Oeconomus publishes more than 400 studies, analyses, and articles, in addition to producing books, specialized publications, podcasts, and professional broadcasts.

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, and he is also a regular columnist at Index and Portfolio.