[2] One of the main interests in his early years was history studies, and he interviewed one of the accomplices involved in the assassination of the royal family.

Despite this, Mironov managed to pass entry exams and enroll as a student at the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology in Moscow.

[citation needed] Finding it too difficult to comply with the Soviet curriculum that included the history of the Communist Party of the USSR, he left within a year.

Nearly a decade later, in 1984, Mironov was arrested for distributing samizdat and for his contacts with foreigners (mostly students at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute).

[4] The lengthy investigation that followed, included extreme interrogations, torture by sleep deprivation and 35 days in an isolation cell or the kartser.

He set up a series of confidential meetings in western Europe between Russian and Chechen politicians, for European diplomatic mediation of the Russo-Chechen conflict.

In September, Mironov discovered that the police had refused to register his complaint and cleared the person responsible for the attack.

[9] With medical help provided in Europe, Mironov gradually returned to health and resumed his work as a human rights activist, reporter and fixer.

The last article authored by Andrei Mironov accompanied by photographs of his colleague and friend Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, recorded the trauma of children under fire,[10] before the journalists set off to cover the presidential elections in Sloviansk.

French photographer William Roguelon, sole survivor of the reporters traveling together, said that the group was targeted by mortars and automatic weapons from Karachun hill.

[11] After Mironov's death, social activist and contender for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Svetlana Gannushkina described him as a person with a "crystal clear soul, absolute unselfishness, a limitless, uncompromising sense of justice, a remarkable kindness and belief in goodness".