Russian poet and longtime RFE/RL Russian Service journalist Aleksei Tsvetkov has died in Israel at the age of 75.
In a Facebook post, Tsvetkov's friend and New York-based poet Bakhyt Kenzheyev posted news of Tsvetkov's death in a hospital on May 12.
The cause of death was not immediately clear, but last week Tsvetkov announced on social media that he was hospitalized with a fever and pneumonia-like symptoms.
Tsvetkov was born in Ukraine and studied at universities in Odesa and Moscow.
He was a strident critic of Russia's invasion of his native Ukraine.
In the 1970s, Tsvetkov participated along with Kenzheyev, Aleksandr Soprovsky, and Sergei Gandlevsky in the underground group of poets known as Moscow Time.
Tsvetkov left the Soviet Union for the United States in 1975, after his arrest in Moscow and forced move to the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya.
Tsvetkov worked at RFE/RL in Munich and Prague from 1989 to 2004.
He anchored the RFE/RL Russian Service programs The Seventh Continent and The Atlantic Diary.
After leaving RFE/RL in 2004, he lived in Washington and New York.
He continued to contribute to RFE/RL’s Russian Service programs as a columnist and analyst.
In 2018, Tsvetkov moved to Israel.
He was the author of 10 books of poetry and translated Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
