Joanna Kakissis
Joanna Kakissis is a foreign correspondent based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she reports poignant stories of a conflict that has upended millions of lives, affected global energy and food supplies and pitted NATO against Russia.
Kakissis began reporting in Ukraine shortly before Russia invaded in February. She covered the exodus of refugees to Poland and has returned to Ukraine several times to chronicle the war. She has focused on the human costs, profiling the displaced, the families of prisoners of war and a ninety-year-old "mermaid" who swims in a mine-filled sea. Kakissis highlighted the tragedy for both sides with a story about the body of a Russian soldier abandoned in a hamlet he helped destroy, and she shed light on the potential for nuclear disaster with a report on the shelling of Nikopol by Russians occupying a nearby power plant.
Kakissis began reporting regularly for NPR from her base in Athens, Greece, in 2011. Her work has largely focused on the forces straining European unity — migration, nationalism and the rise of illiberalism in Hungary. She led coverage of the eurozone debt crisis and the mass migration of Syrian refugees to Europe. She's reported extensively in central and eastern Europe and has also filled in at NPR bureaus in Berlin, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London and Paris. She's a contributor to This American Life and has written for The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker online and The Financial Times Magazine, among others. In 2021, she taught a journalism seminar as a visiting professor at Princeton University.
Kakissis was born in Greece, grew up in North and South Dakota and spent her early years in journalism at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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A century ago, author Isaac Babel immortalized the Jewish community in one of Ukraine's principal cities. He's still remembered fondly today.
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Ukrainian soldiers trained by the U.S. in Germany speak to NPR about using Western tactics — and weapons — in the latest counteroffensive to push out Russian forces.
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A Russian missile silences a promising young musical duo as Ukraine pleads for more air defense weapons from its western allies.
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Saudi Arabia hosted talks with dozens of nations over the weekend as Ukrainian leaders push for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.
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Russian strikes on Ukrainian ports have intensified since Moscow suspended participation in a deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets.
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As Ukraine claims a strategic victory in a long, grinding counteroffensive, its troops say they need more long-range weapons to fight increasingly entrenched Russian troops.
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U.S. officials have condemned Russia for pulling out of a deal that lets Ukraine export grain to dozens of countries. The situation is especially concerning for countries that are food insecure.
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On a wooded river island, a Ukrainian family guards the legacy of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks, whose history and traditions are being remembered because of Russia's war on Ukraine.
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Workers fleeing the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine describe arrests and torture at the hands of Russian forces they say have turned the plant into a military base.
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Four soldiers in Ukraine's south have spent months making clandestine trips across the river dividing Ukrainian and Russian forces, preparing for a counteroffensive to reclaim occupied land.