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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Four soldiers in Ukraine's south have spent months making clandestine trips across the river dividing Ukrainian and Russian forces, preparing for a counteroffensive to reclaim occupied land.
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Russia launched its biggest drone strike since the war began. Ukrainian officials say it mostly targeting the capital Kyiv. Ukraine's top commander hints a long-awaited counteroffensive is imminent.
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Ukrainian forces claim they've made advances in the battle for Bakhmut — a city in the east that Russia has been trying to capture for more than 10 months.
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An apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Uman was hit after a series of early morning airstrikes across the country Friday.
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An apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Uman has been hit after a series of airstrikes across the country on Friday. The attack is the deadliest strike on a Ukrainian apartment since January. -
As Russia advances on Bakhmut, the loved ones of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war's longest battle mourn at an ever-growing cemetery in Kyiv, and pin their hopes on an imminent counteroffensive.
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Ukraine relies on billions of dollars in aid from the U.S. to keep services running during the war. The way Ukraine spends the money is strictly monitored. The U.S. wants to bolster that transparency.
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The U.S. intelligence leaks, some of which detail the state of the war in Ukraine, have come to light as Ukraine is preparing for a counter-offensive sometime this spring.
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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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Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago today. The mood in Ukraine is somber as residents mark the anniversary.
