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Igor Danchenko is a Russian political risk, defense and economics expert. He is known for obtaining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s university dissertation and allegedly being the prime source of the so-called “Steele Dossier”.

A former Senior Research Analyst at The Brookings Institution, Danchenko worked closely with Fiona Hill, a presidential advisor in the Trump administration from April 2017 to July 2019. Danchenko and Hill co-published a paper (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Realities of a Rising China and Implications for Russia’s Energy Ambitions) and she  acknowledged him in her book, "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” (Brookings FOCUS Book, by Fiona Hill, Clifford  G. Gaddy).

"Igor Danchenko, as research assistant and later senior analyst at Brookings, provided us with a wealth of insights into and information about Vladimir Putin's life, career, and connections in St . Petersburg. These insights helped shape our notion of Putin as the “Survivalist.” Igor also stressed the importance of Putin's early interventions in the Russian energy and transportation sectors in the 1990s. In addition to his intellectual contributions, we are especially grateful to Igor's remarkable ability to locate sources and material that other researchers considered totally inaccessible. He gained notoriety as the person (the only person) to obtain, in 2005, a copy of Putin's dissertation. This was critical material that enabled us to better understand the sources of Putin's thinking as the strategic planner, the CEO of a corporation."

Early Life and Education
Danchenko grew up in Perm Oblast, Russia. He graduated from the Law Faculty of Perm State University and the Department of Political Science at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, United States.

Career
Early in his career, Danchenko worked at Lukoil subsidiary Permtex in Perm and at UralSubSoetStroy in Iran.

Between 1999 and 2005, he was a facilitator for the Open World Russian Leadership Program, US Library of Congress and a leader for senior Russian federal and regional delegations to the US.

From 2003 to 2005, Danchenko worked as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Louisville. In 2005, he became President of Professionals in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Affairs (PREEA), an organisation affiliated with Georgetown University, and began to work at the Brookings Institution, soon becoming Senior Research Analyst, where his speciality included foreign policy and the political elite of Russia, as well as energy policy.

While working at the Brookings Institution, Igor earned another Master’s degree, this time from Georgetown University. In 2006-2009 he attended the CERES (Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies) Programme at the Walsh School of Foreign Service there.

Since 2010, Danchenko has been a consultant on political risk and business intelligence, managing projects on Russia and Eurasia.

Obtaining Putin’s Dissertation
Danchenko first made the news alongside his colleague, fellow Brookings researchers Cliff Gaddy, when they obtained a copy of the previously inaccessible 218-page dissertation of Vladimir Putin on the topic of “Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations”, which had been defended at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1996. Danchenko and Gaddy revealed their findings on March 30, 2006, at a Brookings Center event, where they discussed the dissertation’s relevance to Putin’s views on governance and the economy.

They also presented evidence of extensive of plagiarism in the dissertation, including a translation of a 1978 textbook in his economics dissertation.

Defense and economics expert
Danchenko has been quoted by media outlets on topics ranging from energy politics to defense matters.

On January 10, 2008, he commented on a changing trend in the role of the state in the Russian economy.

On October 25, 2008, Danchenko, said Russia sells a variety of “defensive, not strategic” weapons to Iran, including missile air defense systems.“ The U.S. has been making informal accusations against Russian companies for some time, but they don’t hold any water,” Danchenko argued. “This is a formal step that makes the Russians look bad.”Rosoboronexport is headed by Sergei Chemezov, a KGB colleague of Putin when both were stationed in East Germany. Danchenko noted that the sanctions were limited to one branch of the conglomerate, and that Rosoboronexport also sold titanium to Boeing Co. for use in building jetliners.

On April 8, 2016, he commented on global interests behind the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.