Nic Robertson is CNN’s award-winning International Diplomatic Editor whose experience, knowledge and expertise have established his reputation as one of the finest international correspondents in the industry. While based in the London bureau, he travels extensively, covering diplomacy, political instability, global terrorism, wars, armed conflicts as well as natural disasters. Since joining CNN in 1990, he has been on many of the biggest news stories around the world.

From the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Robertson’s storied career has given him a ringside seat to history. He has borne witness to the death and birth of nations, and catalogued our changing world order.

Robertson has been instrumental in the network’s coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He spent two months in Moscow in early 2022, chronicling the build-up and beginning of the invasion and the anti-war protests on the capital’s streets. He then spent several months reporting inside Ukraine, from battlefield front lines to secure government buildings, interviewing troops and government officials and using his decades in conflict coverage to dig for facts, whether that’s tracking NATO weaponry, Russian drones or honing in on casualty counts. Robertson was also the first journalist to report live from the centre of Kherson after its liberation from Russian forces in November 2022. He was part of the CNN team which was honored with an Emmy Award, an RTS Award and a duPont Award for outstanding coverage of the war.

As CNN’s International Diplomatic Editor, Robertson has covered most global leadership summits in recent years, including multiple G7 and G20 meetings, and is a leading voice in the network’s coverage unravelling political developments in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. He reported heavily on Brexit in 2016 and the tumult in British politics in the years since. He also covered U.S. President Donald Trump’s official visits to Saudi Arabia, the UK, Japan, Vietnam and Ireland.

For more than thirty years, Robertson has worked in conflict zones from the Balkans, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all over the Middle East, breaking news and winning awards for compelling documentaries and in-depth news reports. His decades reporting in Afghanistan yielded exclusive access and interviews in the aftermath of the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from Kabul and subsequent Taliban takeover, including to the notorious prison in Bagram. At this time, he was also very briefly kidnapped during a drive into Kabul.

Following the highly publicized murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Robertson’s long time Saudi contacts helped secure an exclusive interview with Khashoggi’s sons and secured exclusive details from the transcript of his murder. For Robertson’s work on this story, he and his team were honored with a duPont Award.

Robertson has also reported extensively on the civil war in Yemen, consistently securing very rare exclusive access – most notably to the front lines in an embed with the Saudi-led coalition, and to the war-torn city of Marib amidst intensifying attacks from Houthi rebels.

Robertson was one of the first western journalists to reach Osama Bin Laden’s compound following his killing by US navy Seals in May 2011. He reported from ground zero in Beirut, Lebanon covering the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis. Robertson has also extensively documented the escalating violence in Syria, from both inside and outside the country. His powerful CNN report Syria: Frontline Town – Zabadani won him the prestigious 2012 Prix Bayeux TV War Correspondent of the Year award and The New York Festivals 2013 Award for Coverage of a Continuing News Story. A month later, he also received a Foreign Press Association Member Award for his acclaimed documentary World’s Untold Stories: Secrets of the Belfast Project, which exposed fresh, disturbing evidence about the connection between Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Robertson was also recognised, alongside CNN colleagues, with an Emmy and a Peabody Award in 2012, for his extensive reportage on the Arab Spring and its repercussions, as it spread across the Middle East. In Libya, he reported from both sides of the conflict, interviewing Muamar Gadhafi’s sons Saif al Islam and Saadi Gadhafi, as well as being the first to report live during NATO bombings of the Gadhafi compound.

Throughout 2002 and early 2003, Robertson reported from Iraq, during a period of growing tension between Saddam Hussein’s government and the West, remaining in Baghdad during the build-up to Coalition shock and awe strikes on the city in 2003.

Robertson was one of the only western television journalists in Taliban-held Afghanistan when the terror attacks unfolded in the United States on September 11th, 2001, and was able to report on the Taliban response and the attacks by the Northern Alliance on Kabul live via satellite videophone. He reported from all over Afghanistan during the War against Terror, including the fall of the Taliban the following year, and he won a Royal Television Society award for his “Terror on Tape” series about Al Qaeda training films found in the country.

Robertson has also been dispatched to the site of major terrorist incidents, natural disasters, and accidents across the globe. In 2019, he was one of the first reporters on the scene after the terror attack in Borough Market in London, and in 2017 he was again quick on scene following the terror attack in Westminster. In 2015, he covered the November terrorist attacks in Paris as well as the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He also reported from Kenya following the 2015 Westgate Mall terror attack and was part of CNN’s award winning team. He reported from Norway on the horrific massacre committed by Anders Breivik. He spent over a month on the ground in Asia following the disappearance of flight MH370 in 2013, and reported on the fallout of the Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea in 2014. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, CNN sent Robertson to report from New Orleans.

Earlier in his career, as a producer, he covered the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia, as well as reporting from Baghdad during the first Gulf War in Iraq in 1991.

Throughout his career, Robertson has been a recipient of nearly every prestigious award in the industry, including multiple Emmys, Peabodys, duPont Awards, RTS awards, a Foreign Press Association Award and Overseas Press Club honors, to name a few, all in recognition of his work in war zones and disaster areas across the globe. On a lighter note, People Magazine voted him Sexiest News Correspondent in 2001.

He is married to former CNN correspondent Margaret Lowrie and has two daughters.