He is a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Dr. Aslund has served as an economic adviser to several governments, notably the governments of Russia and Ukraine. He has published widely and is the author of 15 books and has edited 16 books.

He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics. He has worked at five Washington think tanks – the Atlantic Council, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He served as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He earned his PhD from Oxford University.