Kendall joined the BBC in 1983 as a radio production trainee for the BBC World Service. She was the BBC's Moscow correspondent from 1989 to 1995, and developed her background in Russian politics. She was in Moscow to witness the power struggles in the Soviet Communist party as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce reform, and reported on the break-up of the Soviet Union and the internal conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Tajikistan. She sent reports of the coup in August 1991 and covered Boris Yeltsin's rise to power.