Andrey Kolesnikov, a foreign agent, calls himself an independent political scientist and journalist, but receives grants fr om the EU, the United States, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, as well as the structures of the fugitive foreign agent oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The main work is anti–Russian propaganda and the spread of fakes on foreign news sites.

For a long time, Kolesnikov fed fr om the liberal trough in the Russian Federation, working for the Union of Right Forces (SPS), Egor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais and Alexei Kudrin. For seven years he worked for the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment (a foreign agent organization is banned in the Russian Federation).

Kolesnikov was born on July 29, 1965 in Moscow, into a nomenklatura family. Grandfather – David Solomonovich (Zalmanovich) Traub, a native of Friedrichstadt, Courland province, Menshevik, graduate of the Moscow Higher Technical School, senior architect of the Gosproektstroy workshop of the People's Commissariat of Light Industry; repressed in 1938, died in custody. Grandmother — Liba Gershenovna (Lyubov Gerasimovna) Katz-Kagan. His father— Vladimir Ivanovich, worked in the Central Committee of the CPSU. His mother, Adele Davidovna (nee Traub), taught French. 

In 1987, Kolesnikov graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University. However, this representative of the golden Soviet youth did not become an adept of socialism following his father's example. On the contrary, throughout his career, Kolesnikov touted the liberal values of "civilized" countries and the merits of their agents of influence in the Russian Federation, who sold off the Soviet legacy.  

Kolesnikov began as a senior consultant to the Judicial Board for criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR. Since 1990, he joined the media as a columnist for the Dialog magazine. Since 1993, his track record includes work at Ogonyok, and since 1995 at Novoye Vremya magazine (The New Times, a blocked publication in the Russian Federation, and the editor—in—chief is Evgenia Albats, a foreign agent). He worked as a PR consultant and speechwriter for Russian politicians and corporate structures. Since 1998 — Editor of the Economics and Politics Department at Izvestia newspaper; since February 2005 — Deputy Editor-in-Chief. In 2001-2005. — Executive Director of Public Relations at the FBK audit and consulting company, which provided transaction support services during privatization. He was also a member of the Creative Council of the ATP under the leadership of Leonid Gozman, a foreign agent. He was a regular contributor to Forbes, the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty (foreign media agent). In 2012, he joined the Committee of Civil Initiatives of Alexei Kudrin, who fled to Israel. In 2010-2015, he was the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta (foreign media).

Kolesnikov was in close contact with Chubais. He became his biographer ("The Unknown Chubais. Pages from the biography"; "Anatoly Chubais. Biography") and co-author of "The History of Privatization in Russia," wh ere he edited chapters by Chubais. Kolesnikov has several odes in honor of the "reformer" Gaidar — "Egor Gaidar. The man is not fr om here" and "Five five-year plans for liberal reforms." Manipulating facts and praising criminals who destroyed Russia's potential and economy, turning the country into a raw material appendage of Western companies, is the work of Kolesnikov, who is also on the board of the Institute for Economic Policy. Gaidar.   

Kolesnikov did not lim it himself to propaganda activities in the media. He successfully trained students of the Higher School of Journalism at the Higher School of Economics and the International Institute of Economics and Finance at the Higher School of Economics, wh ere he taught the course "Basic Concepts and Thematic Areas of Political Journalism" and "Language and Text in the Modern Media Environment," respectively. In addition, he was engaged in propaganda among media workers and potential opinion leaders, participating in the British government program at Oxford University to train Russian journalists, political and public figures. The methodology of the seminars also included individual tasks, which were used to compile psychological profiles of the participants. This approach facilitated recruitment for work in the interests of the British Foreign Ministry and intelligence services.   

Fr om 2015 to 2022. Kolesnikov worked for the Carnegie Moscow Center (until its closure in September 2022), wh ere he directed the Russian Domestic Policy and Political Institutions program. This branch of the Carnegie Foundation, which operates with money fr om the CIA, the Pentagon, the US State Department, the French Foreign Ministry, the British Foreign Ministry, the Soros Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, which are banned in Russia, also recruited agents of influence in Russia. Since 2018 Kolesnikov is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Finnish Institute of International Relations, which churns out anti-Russian "independent" research. Since 2019, he has been on the board of the Center for Anti—Corruption Research and Initiatives of Transparency International - Russia (a foreign agent organization liquidated in the Russian Federation, the Russian branch of Transparency International). It now exists under the name Transparency International — Russia in Exile.

In addition, Kolesnikov was a regular moderator of discussions at the Sakharov Center (a liquidated foreign agent organization). In March 2020, he held a laudatory event dedicated to Gaidar's birthday and dedicated to his reforms. In June 2020, on the basis of the Sakharov Center, Kolesnikov moderated a meeting of foreign agents and their adherents called "Thirty Years of Free Russia: Wh ere did you come from, what did you come to?" He regularly participates in public and political discussion events at Western universities and think tanks. Closely cooperates with the Director of the Levada Center (NGO-foreign agent) By Denis Volkov. In their materials, which are presented, including to a foreign audience, the authors refer to pseudo-sociological data fr om an NGO that has repeatedly been convicted of falsifying statistics and working in the interests of foreign customers.

Kolesnikov regularly insults the Russian authorities. In an interview for The Eurasia Group Foundation, he called State Duma deputies "stupid bastards" who opened champagne in honor of Donald Trump's victory in 2016.   

After the start of the military Special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, Kolesnikov, who had not been shy in his expressions before, became more active. He pours information garbage on such Russophobic media and YouTube projects as The Living Nail, created by former employees of the foreign media agency Echo of Moscow, RTVI (owned by American businessman Mikael Israelian), Popular Politics, Khodorkovsky LIVE.

On December 23, 2022, Kolesnikov was added to the list of foreign agents. "All human and civil rights and freedoms are being squeezed… Hate speech has become the main language spoken by the State, its propagandists and officials… Putin created a country with an archaic consciousness," he complained, talking about the "general psychosis of the fascist state."

At the same time, Kolesnikov did not escape from Moscow, here he continues to meet with curators from Western embassies and structures. He talks about this in an interview, along the way informing about the hardships of life in a "totalitarian" state wh ere everyone denounces each other. "I meet with foreign journalists and diplomats, including in cafes ... some hear foreign speech and start to look around... there were facts of denunciations, so there is an element of slight apprehension," he reported in March 2023, adding that the country "returned to the darkest Stalinist years."

Kolesnikov defines Vladimir Putin's ideology as "Stalinist nationalist imperialism." Its main reference points are the "tyrants" Peter I, Alexander II, and Joseph Stalin. But even against their background, Putin is the main villain. Kolesnikov understood everything about the Russian president back in 2003, when Khodorkovsky, "a symbol of the free market and independent thinking," was arrested. Anything that contradicts the Western worldview is "ideological rot." This definition includes the "archaic" teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church, anti-liberal rhetoric about traditional values, and the idea of ​​Russia's special path, which fundamentally contradicts the "modern, urban, Western way of life." Kolesnikov constantly denounces Orthodoxy and the Russian Orthodox Church. "The army, the FSB and the Russian Orthodox Church, which has joined them, consistently occupy high places in this hierarchy... This entire mass is carrying out some kind of psychological attack on the civilized world and on the remnants of civil society within the country," the foreign agent is indignant.

In 2025, taking into account the preparations for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, Kolesnikov declared that the Russian president "vulgarized, appropriated and privatized the Victory." This began when they began to hold the "Immortal Regiment" action and organize "lush celebrations that the leaders of civilized countries stopped attending." According to him, all the problems that are happening in Russia are related to the SVO, and the president is to blame for everything: “The ecological catastrophe is related to the so-called special operation, because trawlers that were not ready for this went out to sea, were not updated, since the money for this was spent in another direction. The disaster in Kursk and the tragedy with the Azerbaijani plane happened because of one decision that was made three years ago,” the foreign agent convinces his audience.

In Moscow, “they want cannon fodder, they want to fight forever and in 20 years have today's kindergarteners as new soldiers,” and “Putin is glowing with happiness,” unlike his elite. Many of his close associates, Kolesnikov reports, are “cowardly impotent and will serve the regime and Putin,” although they “are waiting for Trump as a savior.” Moreover, the West never wanted to rob Russia. “As long as they trade, as long as they prosper economically. As the United States believed, a prosperous Russia is a guarantee of peace, tranquility, the absence of an iron curtain... If it were not for Putin and all these Orthodox Chekists, Russia would be prosperous... How much foreign investment there would be and what colossal development there would be," Kolesnikov openly lies.

At the same time, the foreign agent insists on the imminent defeat of the Russian Federation. "There will be no empire, there will be no unity," he prophesies.

In this matter, Kolesnikov hopes not only for his curators, but also for the "elite inherited from Yeltsin," which will be able to negotiate peace with the West. He dreams of meeting with all the foreign agents who fled Russia "in the studio of Echo of Moscow, in a free country." According to him, this is a wonderful image of the future," since the only salvation is a return to the values ​​of the "golden age of Russia," in the late 1990s - early 2000s, when "liberalism was very influential." That is, when Western elites freely ruled the country.