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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The northern regional capital has become a frequent target of Russian drones, missiles and guided bombs. Now, Ukraine's top general says at least 50,000 Russian troops have massed across the border. -
With Russian attacks escalating, Ukraine is dependent on air defense systems and munitions supplied by western allies to protect Ukrainian cities. -
The Ukrainian military says that today it attacked airfields in Russia, where fighter jets used to bomb Ukrainian cities are stored. They say it's an attempt to weaken the Kremlin's war machine.
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Ukraine tries to shield its cities from near-nightly Russian drone attacks using air defense systems and snipers in trucks on the ground – and, in the Black Sea, gunners on speedboats.
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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares snapshots of moments from their lives and work around the world. -
The attacks was one of the largest on Ukraine's capital in months. It came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared for the G7 summit in Canada, where he is pushing for stronger sanctions on Russia. -
North Korea sent 11,000 elite soldiers to support Russia. Their progress — especially in drone warfare — has implications not only for Russia's war on Ukraine but also peace on the Korean Peninsula. -
President Trump said the Russian leader Vladimir Putin had warned that he would retaliate for a covert Ukrainian attack in Russia last weekend that destroyed dozens of Russian bombers. -
Officials from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday failed to reach a ceasefire but agreed to exchange more prisoners. -
Ukraine and Russia have begun the exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war, the largest such swap since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
