Shaun Walker (born 1981/1982) is a British journalist and author, noted primarily for his writing on Ukraine and Russia for British newspaper The Guardian . [1] Walker was shortlisted for the 2024 UK Press Awards. [2]
Walker visited Russia for the first time as an 18-year-old, in 2000, working as an English teacher, and then travelling around the country. [3] He then returned home to the UK, where he studied Russian and Soviet history at Oxford University. [4] After completing his studies, Walker returned to Moscow at the end of 2003, working for an NGO for a year, before taking up journalism. [3]
Walker worked for British newspaper The Independent from 2007, and was its Moscow correspondent until 2013. [5] From 2014, working for The Guardian , primarily as its Ukraine and Russia correspondent, he has extensively covered the war in Donbas. [6] As of 2018 Walker was living in Budapest, Hungary. [3] From 2019, he has been The Guardian's central and eastern Europe correspondent. [6]
Walker is the author of the non-fiction books Odessa Dreams: The Dark Heart of Ukraine's Online Marriage Industry (2014) and The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past (2018). [7] The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West (2025) is about the agents who lived apparently normal lives in the west as part of Soviet espionage programmes. [8] [9] [10] [11]
Walker has been criticised[ by whom? ] for some his pro-Russian writings prior to 2022, including a 2014 article for The Guardian entitled "I can't stop dreaming about Vladimir Putin", and his positive comments on Russia at the time of the 2018 World Cup. [1]