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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U.S. military veterans who support Ukraine worry about political blowback since the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has connections to their movement. -
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his U.K. counterpart are in Kyiv after Russia received shipments of close-range ballistic missile systems from Iran.
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Ukraine is in mourning after Russian missiles tore into a military academy, killing more than 50 people and injuring more than 270. It’s one of the deadliest attacks of the two-and-a-half year war.
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Envoys and leaders of more than 90 nations participated, and most signed a statement saying Ukraine’s borders must be respected in any deal to end the war. Russia wasn't invited to the meeting.
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The U.S. and Europe have pledged nearly $2 billion in aid for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which has been devastated by Russian strikes. That damage has caused rolling blackouts.
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The Biden administration has given Ukraine permission to use certain U.S. weapons to strike inside of Russia near Kharkiv for “counter-fire purposes,” according to two U.S. officials.
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Some residents of Ukraine's second-largest city say they feel abandoned by the West.
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Ukraine says it is struggling to contain a new Russian offensive in a northeastern border region. Its army is short on troops and ammunition. How has Russia gained momentum in this war?
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As Ukraine awaits for badly needed military aid approved by Congress earlier this month, it's not just weapons and ammunition in short supply. Ukraine also desperately needs more soldiers.
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After months of deliberations, Ukraine's parliament adopted the law to mobilize hundreds of thousands of new soldiers. Russian troops are on the offensive, and Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted.
