Steven Pifer

Steven Pifer is a senior adviser with the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program. A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as on arms control and security issues. His assignments included deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (2001–2004), where he had principal responsibility for policy toward Russia and Ukraine; ambassador to Ukraine (1998–2000), where he oversaw 500 American and Ukrainian staff conducting U.S.-Ukrainian relations and implementing $250 million per year in assistance programs; and special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia (1996–1997), where he advised the president, vice president, and national security adviser on policy toward the former Soviet Union.

Ambassador Pifer also served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow, and London, as well as with the U.S. delegation to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces negotiations in Geneva. He holds a B.A. in economics from Stanford University, where he later spent a year as a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.