SERGEI CHERNIKOV

From a chance meeting in a bar in the far Arctic North, Will talks to Sergei Chernikov, a 30-year-old Russian living in Svalbard. From Moscow to Longyearbyen, Sergei speaks openly about why people shouldn’t speak about nationality, but instead should look to his new word of “valuenality” to change perceptions and avoid stereotyping people based on where they are from.

Their conversation also includes insights into life in Svalbard, including the political difficulties of Barentsburg, is the second-largest settlement in Svalbard, Norway with about 455 inhabitants, almost entirely made up of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians.

On the complicated and too often political world we live in, Sergi wanted to add,
“I’d love to talk more and feel sad it was so briefly, especially about what’s happening in Russia now. It’s really a horrible and terrifying situation for me to see so many people just stuck in propaganda without any attempts to have a critical way of thinking and blindly supporting the evil or those saying they are “just living their lives”. It’s a huge crisis of the nation and I don’t see how it could be solved.