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 anda ninety-year-old "mermaid" who swims in a mine-filled sea. Kakissis highlighted the tragedy for both sideswith a story about the body of a Russian soldier abandoned in a hamlet he helped destroy, and sheshed 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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Ukraine's counteroffensive has resulted in little gain on the battlefield. Some EU members and some members of Congress are questioning whether aid to Ukraine should continue.
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A year after Ukrainian soldiers freed it from occupation, the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson has learned to live with deadly and near-constant attacks from Russian forces.
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Twenty-two months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, dissension and fatigue are evident among Kyiv's most senior officials. The war has reached a stalemate.
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In Ukraine's second-largest city, near the Russian border, grade-schoolers attend classes in a subway station that doubles as a bomb shelter.
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Ukrainians worry that a regional war in the Middle East will distract their country's allies, embolden Russia and prolong Russia's war on Ukraine.
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After a powerful Russian missile kills a fifth of a Ukrainian village's population, survivors grapple with revelations that pro-Russian neighbors may have helped coordinate the attack.
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As Ukraine tries to expel Russian forces from its territory, it's fighting a second war — on corruption — as it seeks to join the European Union and NATO and keep U.S. funds flowing.
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As winter approaches, Ukraine's military takes stock of the limited gains of its counteroffensive. As the war goes on, support for Ukraine seems to waver — especially among Republicans in Congress.
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As bipartisan support in the U.S. wanes, Ukraine hosts foreign ministers from the European Union, which continues to view Russia's war on Ukraine as an existential threat.
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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.