Makar Diakonov
Makar Diakonov in a baseball cap, listening during a discussion

Berlin · Media · IT

Investigative video, OSINT and data analysis for independent media.

I produce and run investigative journalism, and I build the tooling behind it: open-source research, data pipelines, AI-assisted workflows.

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Skills

Experience

2026 – now Video Production Director · Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC) Poland / Belarus

Independent media outlet focused on Belarus. I run production of video built on investigations.

  • Lead a production and post-production team of 7+: editors, graphic and sound designers, camera operators, freelancers.
  • Relaunched long-form on YouTube: from one film every two months to two films a month.
  • Launched a new short format for a youth audience.
2024 – 2025 Producer / AI Project Manager · ROMB Media Germany

German-Russian independent documentary production.

  • Produced 5 documentary films on YouTube: 2.5M+ views combined, one of ROMB's top 3 by views.
  • Secured a co-production with Channel 4 (UK).
  • Fundraising and administration: board and donor reporting, budgeting, negotiations; 75,000 EUR raised in the first 3 months.
  • Built a pipeline of 5 AI models (speech-to-text, translation, text-to-speech) for English versions of the films. Translator time cut from 30 to 5 hours per hour of film.
  • Ran focus groups with end users of the translated material.

Whisper · ElevenLabs · Gemini · Python · SQLite · Gradio

2024 Fixer · The Daily Telegraph Freelance

Fixer for Anna Conkling, a reporter at The Daily Telegraph (UK).

2024 Growth & Development Consultant · IIOPE Australia · remote

Non-profit opening kindergartens in developing countries, starting with Romania (400+ children).

  • Budgeting, donor negotiations, media strategy.
  • Built the website and the SMM team; ran contractor hiring at an event at Cornell University.
2024 AI Project Manager · Saudia Dubai · contract

An AI chatbot for a live performance at an airline exhibition in Dubai.

  • Coordinated a team of 4 against the client's on-request needs.
  • Led the speech-to-text and text-to-speech integration and tuned a ChatGPT-based assistant.

Python · C# · Flask · OpenAI API · Unreal Engine 5

2023 Technical Project Manager · Morozoff Development Contract

A VR guided tour of a real-estate project for exhibitions.

  • Built and managed a team of 10 designers and contractors; delivered in 2 months, one month ahead of schedule.

Blender · C# · Unreal Engine 5 · Figma

2022 CEO & Co-founder · Helping to Leave Czech Republic / Ukraine

A grassroots initiative that became the largest organisation in Ukraine dedicated to evacuating people in need.

  • Launched 3 programmes: evacuation from Ukraine, evacuation from Russia, evacuation of cancer patients.
  • Raised over 1,000,000 EUR in grants and business donations; relationships with major donors.
  • Led the analytics team and IT: chatbot, internal software, data collection and analysis. Tracked KPIs (session duration, conversion) and ran user feedback loops.
  • Negotiated special conditions with banks and with Snapchat, Meta and Google.
  • Contributed to helping 45,000+ Ukrainians.
2021 – 2022 Python Developer · forloop.ai Prague

No-code platform for automation, data collection and analysis.

  • Integrated visualization packages into the desktop app; debugging on back end and front end.
2019 Video production · Open Russia, Vesna Youth Democratic Movement Freelance

Scriptwriting, voice-over and post-production.

2017 – 2018 Volunteer coordinator · Navalny's presidential campaign St Petersburg

Coordinated 60+ volunteers in canvassing and election observation in the Admiralteysky district.

Projects

BIC Kotau’s dangerous connections Investigation

How a Belarusian opposition figure disappeared and who was involved.

BIC From Belarus with War Investigation

In two years of the full-scale invasion, Belarusian companies doubled their supplies to Russian arms manufacturers. BIC analysed supply data from 58 Belarusian enterprises to 41 Russian military-industrial plants.

BIC Clean energy — dirty routes Investigation

How Belarusian wood pellets were marketed to Europe in an attempt to circumvent sanctions. The trade data analysed also included a Polish company.

BIC Sheiman’s associates and Chinese motorcycles Investigation

A business built on importing Chinese motorcycles at undervalued prices: the equipment transited Russia, cleared customs in Belarus, and only then re-entered Russia.

BIC Short-form video format Launched

A short vertical format for a youth audience, launched at BIC (in Russian).

2025 Automated film translation pipeline ROMB

Speech-to-text, translation and voice synthesis chained into one workflow that gave a Russian-language documentary outlet an English audience.

2023 Data journalism hackathon — winner Greenhouse of Social Technologies

First place at a hackathon on data journalism.

About

Media manager with an IT background. I started in Prague as a Python developer, launched Helping to Leave in 2022 and then moved into independent media: documentary production, fundraising and now investigative video. I like work where a story needs both reporting and engineering.

Based
Berlin, Germany
Languages
Russian (native) · English (fluent) · Czech (fluent) · German (basic)
Education
42 Berlin, software engineering, 2026 – 2028
MBA Media Management, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, 2025
Information Technology, Smíchov Technical School, Prague, 2022
Fellowships & scholarships
Khlebnikov Fellowship, JXFund, 2026
Scholarship of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, Prague, 2019 – 2021
Awards
Hackathon winner, data journalism, Greenhouse of Social Technologies, 2023

Contact

diakonov.makar@gmail.com · LinkedIn