[clarification needed] From 1969 until 1988, he worked as a research assistant at the Institute for History and from 1971 until 1991 he was a member of the Soviet–German Commission of Historians.
He worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Global Economy and International Relations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine from 1989 until 2002.
Zabarko is the author of about 200 books and articles, published in Israel, Austria, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and Hungary.
Since 1998 he is the director of the Institute for Social and Parish Workers and since 2004, he has also been the president of the Ukrainian association of former Jewish prisoners of ghetto and Nazi concentration camps.
On 21 October 2009, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.