Sergei Sokolov was born in 1967 in Moscow and graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in 1993 with a degree in International Journalism. He started working as a freelance correspondent with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1983 and became a correspondent in 1990. He became the head of the education section in 1993 and at the same time worked as a columnist and editor of the investigations desk. He was Deputy Chief Editor of the weekly Moscow News during 1994-1995 and has worked as a correspondent for the television programme 'The View'. Sergei specialises in military reporting, investigations into state corruption and other high-profile crimes. He taught at the Russian State Humanitarian University during between 1995-2005, where he led a course on investigative journalism. He currently works as the Deputy-Editor-in-Chief and Chief-Editor of the web portal at Novaya Gazeta.