Yury Baranyuk began his career with state television in Russia, but left to join free journalists on the Nastoyashchee vremya TV channel in St Petersburg to make honest reports about events around the world. Protests, ecological issues, the work of rights activists and art are among the subjects that Yury covers every day.

“In my work, I am guided by a wise saying: ‘Don’t worry that people do not know you: worry that you don’t know people’. I discovered that our world is magnificent in its incomparable variety, but, most important of all, that though we are so unlike one another we have been put on this earth to achieve something together. That needs to be nurtured and encouraged. It is greatly to the credit of LGBT activists that they promote this all-embracing love. The slogan ‘All are different, all are equal’ refers not to a literal equality between different people but the right of everyone in this world to be happy.”