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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As Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk, where a beloved Ukrainian composer wrote his most famous song — now known worldwide as "Carol of the Bells" — Ukrainians seek to safeguard his legacy.
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A Russian lieutenant general accused of using banned chemicals on Ukrainian soldiers was assassinated Tuesday in Moscow.
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The apparent assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov came a day after Ukraine's security service charged him with using banned chemical weapons.
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A young soldier who lost both legs on the frontline stars in Ukraine's version of "The Bachelor," showcasing the increasing number of war-wounded Ukrainians as attractive heroes, not victims.
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A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow. A Ukrainian official said the country's security service carried out the attack. -
Russian strikes continue to destroy Ukraine's power grid, prompting nationwide power cuts while temperatures drop. Workers at a damaged plant try to restore its operation before the winter freeze. -
Russia's president and senior Kremlin officials financed and facilitated the transport of at least 314 Ukrainian children into "coerced" foster care and adoptions, a new Yale University report says. -
Russian strikes continue to destroy Ukraine's power grid, prompting nation-wide power cuts while temperatures drop. Workers at a damaged plant try to restore its operation before the winter freeze.
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A Ukrainian soldier and his wife describe how the large-scale Russian invasion has changed their lives and their country. -
The U.S. is allowing Ukraine to use the powerful long-range weapons to strike in and around Kursk — the same region where some 10,000 North Korean troops were recently deployed.
