Career
After graduating Sannikov spent time working for a Soviet oil company in Pakistan and in Egypt working on the construction of an aluminum plant.
In November 1997, Sannikov was one of the co-founders of the civil initiative Charter 97, becoming its international coordinator. Charter 97 is a human rights group modeled on Charter 77 in then-Czechoslovakia. The group hosts one of the most popular Belarusian news web pages, and is a rare voice of opposition to the Lukashenko party in Belarus.