Vasily began working as a journalist over a decade ago on subjects related to freedom of speech, human rights and the Northern Caucasus war with the Russian news agency Kavkazskaya Politika. Since 2016, he worked as a correspondent for Dozhd, also known as TV Rain, the only Russian-language independent television channel launched in 2010 and is currently based in Latvia.
In May 2016, Vasily covered a local conflict in Chechnya and was forced to run through the mountains and report from a tiny remote mountain village before fleeing Chechnya and the Russian Federation. In November 2016, he was arrested and kidnapped by the separatists in Donetsk. From 2016 to 2022, he covered most of protest actions in Russia and has been arrested multiple times for his journalism by Russian police.
Vasily covered the war in Karabakh in 2020, the revolution in Armenia in 2018, and elections and protests in Belarus in 2020, where he and his team was arrested and deported for five years for their journalism. In 2022, he covered unrest in Kazakhstan, where he was fired at by the local army. Vasily also worked for Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper whose editor-in-chief Dmitriy Muratov was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize his efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.
Despite censorship on war reporting on Russia, which has limited reporting activity at Dozhd and Novaya Gazeta, Vasily continues to work as a reporter in Russia.
