Paton Walsh began at the "Observer" as a researcher on the travel and film sections, before winning the Young Journalist of the Year award from the British "Press Gazette". The winning articles included one on nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, another on male anorexia, and one on getting malaria in Gambia. The award secured him a place on the home news desk where he worked for 18 months before accepting voluntary redundancy to go and work as the newspaper's stringer in Moscow. He quickly became the "Guardian" and "Observer" Moscow correspondent, which position he held for four years. During that time he was one of two journalists to get inside the grounds of the Nord Ost theatre at the close of the Dubrovka theatre siege in October 2002.