
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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On Monday, President Biden appeared to rule out delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, but Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tells NPR he's optimistic Western allies will eventually supply them.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Wednesday his country will export more than a dozen of its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine. The move follows weeks of pressure from Western allies.
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Deputy ministers from various ministries in Ukraine are being forced out of power amid corruption investigations. Do the firings mark a shift toward transparency?
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The killing of children's author Volodymyr Vakylenko has become a symbol of Russia's war on Ukrainian culture. His last work was a diary of life under Russian occupation.
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A Kharkiv metro station became a bomb shelter as the city came under Russian attack. Now, at the holiday season, it's also a Christmas village where kids can drop off letters to Grandfather Frost.
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The capital Kyiv and the western city of Lviv were among the cities hit in the latest round of attacks aimed at the country's infrastructure.
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A small country bordering Russia and partly occupied by it is alarmed by the recent arrival of tens of thousands of Russian men fleeing conscription into the Ukraine war.
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As Russia's bombardment of Ukraine's infrastructure continues, the Ukrainian government is set to receive more than $4 billion in aid from the U.S. to help keep basic services running.
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Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy emerge as the single largest party. Her coalition will be able to form the next government, and Meloni is expected to become Italy's first female prime minister.
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Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is on track to be the biggest party in parliament, according to provisional results.