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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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.
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Some Ukrainians are spending their days under the fire of advancing Russian troops. We meet some of the last residents of an eastern Ukrainian town.
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Two years since Russia's invasion, the Ukrainian border city of Kharkiv prepares for a long war by building entire school systems underground.
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As Ukraine struggles for military supplies and aid, a town in the eastern region of Donetsk that has been on the frontline for 10 years has fallen to Russia.
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A Valentine's Day story from Ukraine, where the so-called Love Train brings significant others to meet soldiers on leave.
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There is growing tension between Ukraine's president and his military chief of staff. If that general loses his job, Ukrainian society could be divided at a crucial time.
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As Ukrainians prepare to celebrate Christmas according to the Western calendar for the first time, they fear the support of their biggest allies – the U.S. and the European Union – is wavering.
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A two-day European Union summit begins with future aid for Ukraine in doubt.
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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.