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.
-
One day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's tense meeting with President Trump, Ukrainians worry about what the Oval Office clash means for their country's future.
-
We look at the response in Ukraine to Fridays shambolic press conference at the Oval Office between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Trump.
-
The meeting comes about a week after Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator and repeated Kremlin talking points, including suggesting that Ukraine started the war with Russia. -
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump in Washington on Friday, where they are expected to sign a deal on U.S. access to some of Ukraine's critical raw materials.
-
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Trump say they will meet Friday in Washington as the two countries finalize a deal on mineral resources. -
As the U.S. turns away from Ukraine, more than a dozen leaders gather in Kyiv as Ukrainians mark three years since Russia's invasion and ongoing war.
-
Thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Amid a stark shift in U.S. policy, Ukrainians want the war to end — but not on Russia's terms. -
Three years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what has been the impact of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II? How does the U.S. pivot toward Russia affect peace prospects?
-
As the Trump administration works toward a halt in the fighting, many experts fear that Ukraine will be forced to accept a ceasefire deal that will only give Russian forces a badly needed breather. -
The U.S. has been the strongest supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia. Yet with a series of blunt comments, President Trump now sounds more aligned with Russia than Ukraine.
