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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An agreement allowing Ukrainian grain to ship through the Black Sea has been extended for two months just a day before its expiration — overcoming Russia's threats to pull out of the deal. -
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. -
The Chinese leader's call comes as he has sought to play the role of peacemaker, though chances of a big breakthrough are slim, given how far apart Russia's and Ukraine's positions remain. -
"He's giving us hope this neighborhood will come back to life," says a neighbor in the apartment building in Kharkiv damaged during Russia's invasion. -
Built largely with Western donations, the spa-like retreat provides soldiers with counseling, aromatherapy and more. But most soldiers are there for no more than a week. -
Russian forces crossed from Belarus into Ukraine a year ago, headed for Kyiv, before their unexpected retreat. As the war drags on, Ukraine is fortifying even the quietest stretch of this border. -
Ukrainian officials say at least six people were killed in Lviv and other cities in a Russian bombardment that included advanced Kinzhal missiles, which air defenses can't shoot down. -
An adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the reports are based on "anonymous conjecture but not real facts." The attacks, he said, are "devoid of tactical sense." -
Residents of the Russian-speaking city became partisans who fought for the independence of Ukraine. The nine-month occupation is over, but Russia continues to shell the city. -
President Biden often pledges to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia "as long as it takes." The risky secret trip to the warzone is aimed at showing he means it.
