Ivanov, a correspondent for the St. Petersburg daily Nevskoye Vremya, was last seen by his colleagues on June 16, 1995, when he left for Chechnya to look for Nevskoye Vremya journalists Maksim Shabalin and Feliks Titov, who had disappeared in February. By the end of 1995, Ivanov’s colleagues had not heard from him, and they feared he was killed.
Alla Manilova, the editor-in-chief of Nevskoye Vremya, told CPJ in March 2003 that Shabalin, Titov, and Ivanov are still missing and that she heard rumors in the mid-1990s that Chechen rebels had killed Shabalin and Titov. She said that when Ivanov went to Chechnya to look for his colleages, the search team initially agreed not to split up, but Ivanov decided to go into the mountains on his own and was never heard from again.