In 2008 he cleared 5.70 m indoors then improved to 5.75 m outdoors at a meeting in Kazan. This was enough to make the Russian Olympic team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and he reached his first major senior final, finishing in fifth place with a vault of 5.70 m. He cleared 5.70 m both indoors and outdoors in 2009, but his sole international competition was the 2009 European Athletics Indoor Championships where he failed to reach the final. In 2010 he was sixth at the World Indoor Championships but did not record a valid mark in the final at the European Championships.