I was born on the second day of the year 1980 in a small town, Baranavichy near the western border of the Soviet Union (now independent Belarus) into a family of lawyers. Having lived in Baranavichy only several months, my parents, without taking into account my opinion, decided to leave my cozy hometown and to move to Siberia.
So it turned that I lived most of my early childhood in the settlement of Urengoy near the Arctic Circle, where a temperature bellow 40 degrees Celsius was nothing unusual (picture on the left with my nanny). Throughout the 1980s our family continued to travel a lot across the Soviet Union and lived in Russia and Kazakhstan before finally returning to Belarus where I completed my secondary education.
Around the world...
Having traveled so much in my early childhood I could not sit in one spot for a long time. I decided to go to study to the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University, which is known for such alumni as Lenin, Putin (picture on the right) and Medvedev who used to be my civil law professor.
I graduated with highest honours from the Law Faculty in 2002. But the idea of starting to work as a lawyer immediately after my first degree did not appeal to me. I won a scholarship to go on with my legal studies in the Netherlands and England. In 2003 I completed my Joint LL.M degree from Nottingham (England) and Utrecht (the Netherlands) universities. Apart from that I wanted to see the world and travelled extensively to different countries as far-flung as Sweden and Uruguay, Kazakhstan and the USA...
While working on my PhD, I taught law for several years at the Belarusian State University and did other legal work in Belarus and Russia before coming to Harvard Law School. Following my graduate studies at Harvard I worked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the D.C. Circuit (picture below) and joined an international law firm in Washington, D.C. In 2009, I moved to London to work with international arbitration group of Freshfields.
Hobbies...
To mention some of my hobbies - cycling, rock climbing, Belarusian studies, chess and photography. By the way, I have uploaded some of my photos to this web-site.
