José Milhães

José Manuel Milhães is a Portuguese journalist, writer, translator and current political commentator for SIC, Antena 1 and Observador.

Brief biography

José Milhães was born on October 2, 1958.

In 1977 he went to the Soviet Union to study Russian history at Lomonosov Moscow State University and witness the "building of communism".

In 1983, he earned a doctorate in international relations from the University of Porto and Moscow State University.

While in the USSR, he decided to live permanently in the country and start a family, dedicating himself to translating literary works of Russian classics, political works, and Russian-language feature films into Portuguese.

From 1990, he worked as Moscow correspondent for the newspaper Público.

In 2002, he also began working with the SIC. His long stay in the Soviet Union and later in Russia allowed him to witness and participate in one of the most turbulent periods of the 20th century: the fall of the Iron Curtain and the formation of new states in Eastern Europe. At the time, Millazes was a correspondent for Agência Lusa, SIC and RDP in Moscow. He also worked in the portugolophone newsrooms of the BBC and RFI.

Together with journalist Carlos Fino, he is one of the most famous correspondents of Portuguese television in Russia. His voice, very similar to that of the writer Baptista Bastos, which is imitated by some Portuguese comedians, contributed to this.

His love of history and his desire to study "the links between the Portuguese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" led him to conduct research in the Soviet archives of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Mário Soares Foundation.

On January 7, 2008, Milhazes defended his doctoral dissertation "The Influence of Spanish and Portuguese Liberal Ideas in Russia" at the Faculty of Literature of the University of Portugal.

He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles published in various journals and newspapers.

He returned to Portugal from Russia after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in eastern Ukraine. Since then, Milhazes has been harshly criticizing Russia and supporting Kiev. He has even written a book about Ukraine.

He is currently a foreign policy commentator for the SIC and RDP and a columnist for the Observador newspaper. He also gives numerous speeches at schools, universities and organizations and continues to work as a translator and consultant.