Sasha Lezhnev

Guest Author

Sasha Lezhnev (LinkedIn – X) is Senior Policy Advisor at The Sentry, an investigative and policy organization that seeks to disrupt predatory networks that benefit from conflict, repression, and kleptocracy. At The Sentry, he helps lead engagement on conflict gold and minerals.

Sasha has spent the past 25 years working on human rights, conflict, corruption, and US policy in Africa, having worked at the Enough Project, Global Witness, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. While working in Uganda for 3 years, he founded the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, an award-winning NGO that has rehabilitated over 2,600 former child soldiers.

He is author of the book Crafting Peace: Strategies to Deal with Warlords in Collapsing States and has a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Master’s in International Relations from Cambridge University.

Articles by this author:

(L-R) US Vice President JD Vance, US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio listen as Democratic Republic of the Congo Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner during a meeting with her and Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe (not pictured) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2025. Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed an agreement in Washington on Friday to put an end to a conflict in the eastern DRC that has killed thousands, although broad questions loom on what it will mean. Trump has trumpeted the diplomacy that led to the deal and publicly complained that he has not received a Nobel Peace Prize. But the agreement has also come under scrutiny for its vagueness including on the economic component, with the Trump administration eager to compete with China and profit from abundant mineral wealth in the long-turbulent east of the vast DRC. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

U.S. Sanctions Removal on Mining Magnate Would Set Back Peace and Investment in DR Congo

Oct. 8, 2025 John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev

A M23 soldier stands at the Coltan mining pits in Rubaya on March 5, 2025. He holds a gun. Many people seen in the background.

A Way Out of the DRC’s Proxy War

Mar. 28, 2025 Sasha Lezhnev and John Prendergast