Born in 1960 in the provincial town of Bobruisk, he initially trained as an engineer but late in the Soviet era started taking on jobs as photo correspondent with Belarussian newspapers and began working for Reuters in 1997. His assignments include Russia, Ukraine and Georgia as well as Afghanistan, Liberia and Poland. In the following story, he recounts one of his regular tours of the nature reserve that has grown up in the forest area contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion.)