
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 Russia's war on Ukraine drags on, traumatized soldiers can recharge at a Western-style healing center in northwestern Ukraine before returning to the frontline.
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Ukraine's best-known soldier began fighting Russians in eastern Ukraine in 2014, at age 18, forgoing dreams of becoming an artist. He died earlier this week on the same frontline.
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At least six people have died after a barrage of Russian missiles hit targets across Ukraine early Thursday. They also knocked out power at Europe's largest atomic power station.
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Ukrainian officials say at least six people were killed in Lviv and other cities in a Russian bombardment that included advanced Kinzhal missiles, which air defenses can't shoot down.
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An adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the reports are based on "anonymous conjecture but not real facts." The attacks, he said, are "devoid of tactical sense."
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Russian and Ukrainian forces have been fighting over the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Both sides have suffered horrific losses. Russia is trying to encircle Ukrainian forces still in the city.
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Along a quiet but unpredictable border, Ukrainian soldiers are digging in for a protracted war and training to help besieged forces in the east.
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More than a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the fighting grinds on. Meanwhile the Group of 20 leading economies could not agree on a statement about the war.
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Residents of the Russian-speaking city became partisans who fought for the independence of Ukraine. The nine-month occupation is over, but Russia continues to shell the city.
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Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a lengthy press conference in Kyiv Friday as the country marked one year since Russia's invasion.