You're reading: Most Influential Expats: Savik Shuster

Savik Shuster, 58
#1 Most Influential

Savik Shuster’s career has consistently exposed abuses of power in the former Soviet Union, first in Russia and now in Ukraine, where he is a national star. He also knows a thing or two about football.

His perennial ability to multi-task may be attributable to his multicultural upbringing.

Natalia Kravchuk

He grew up in Soviet Lithuania. In 1971, aged 19, he emigrated to Canada via Israel.

Then, in 1976, Shuster moved to Italy after graduating from medical school. His career in journalism was kick-started by covering the Mujahedin’s war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan.

The collapse of the Soviet Union found Shuster working for Radio Liberty out of Munich, and then out of Moscow until 2001, when the Vladimir Putin chill on free speech blanketed the nation.

Shuster’s started working for Russian TV channel NTV, initially as the presenter of a football program.

Then he found his calling as the host of political shows “Hero of the Day” and “Freedom of Speech,” increasingly isolated islands of dissent as independent media slowly suffocated under Putin’s presidency.

By 2005, there was no room left in Russia for Shuster as NTV canceled his shows.

He moved to Ukraine to continue to what he does best – hosting political talk shows. Initially controversial because of his use of the Russian language, his shows “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom” and then “Shuster Live” became fixtures on Ukraine’s political circus. The shows forced Ukraine’s politicians to think and speak extemporaneously, often with comic results.

He has lost none of its confrontational and critical flair since switching to the TRK Ukraina TV channel owned by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov’s patronage could even be useful in protecting Shuster in the new President Viktor Yanukovych era.

But the threats still loom: Yanukovych’s deputy chief of staff, Hanna Herman, a former Radio Liberty editor, spoke disapprovingly of non-Ukrainian talk show hosts in May.