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Mark MacKinnon
StaffCorrespondentSenior International CorrespondentLondon, U.K.

Area of Expertise

International relations, Canada’s role in the world

Mark MacKinnon has been covering international affairs and Canada’s role in the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the subsequent war in Afghanistan.

Since that moment, he has covered elections and wars, revolutions and refugee crises, in all corners of the world.

One of Canada’s most decorated foreign correspondents, Mark has won the National Newspaper Award seven times, and is nominated for an eighth award in 2023 for his ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (LINK: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukrainians-at-war/ )

Mark has been covering Russia and Ukraine since 2002, when he was first sent abroad to serve as The Globe and Mail’s Moscow bureau chief. He covered the Orange Revolution in 2004 and Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, and witnessed firsthand Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea as well as the start of the eight-year proxy war in Donbas.

Mark has also been internationally recognized for his coverage of the war in Syria, the rise of the so-called Islamic State and the refugee crisis that followed. His 2016 story The Graffiti Kids, which followed the lives of the teenagers who inadvertently started the Syrian war, was named Story of the Year by the London-based Foreign Press Association.

Mark has also been posted to the Middle East and China for The Globe and Mail. He covered the initial arrival of Canadian troops in Afghanistan in 2002, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. He also reported on the 2013 transition of power in China from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping.

He has also won accolades for his investigations into the garment industry in Asia and for his reporting from the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.

Mark is the author of The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics, which was published in 2007 by Random House, and The China Diaries, an e-book of his train travels through the Middle Kingdom along with photographer John Lehmann.

Mark has interviewed many world leaders, including Volodymyr Zelensky, Shimon Peres and Aung San Suu Kyi, and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

He now divides his time between London and Kyiv.

Why did you become a journalist?

I started out wanting to witness history. Now I strive to make sure others don't look away.

28

Years in Journalism

26

Years at The Globe and Mail

Education

Bachelor of Journalism, Carleton University, 1997

Honours & Awards

2021 - National Newspaper Award, International Reporting, for stories about the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

2017 - Story of the Year for "The Graffiti Kids Who Sparked the Syrian War" - Foreign Press Association (UK)

2016 - Journalist of the Year - National Newspaper Awards

2016 - National Newspaper Award, International Reporting, for coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis and its fallout

2014 - National Newspaper Award, International Reporting, for coverage of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine

2011 - National Newspaper Award, Breaking News, for coverage of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan

2011 - National Newspaper Award, Business Reporting, for coverage of the Sino-Forest scandal (with Andy Hoffman)

2003 - National Newspaper Award, Short Features, for a story about life, love, and war in a leper colony in Iraq

1999 - National Newspaper Award, Business Reporting, as part of a team that exposed insider trading on Canadian stock exchanges

Languages spoken

English, French, Russian, conversational Arabic and Chinese (putonghua)

Mark MacKinnon abides by The Globe and Mail Editorial Code of Conduct

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