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.
-
Ukrainian women in their 50s and 60s say they've embraced cheerleading as a way to cope with the extreme stress and anxiety of four years of Russia's full-scale invasion. -
It has been four years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting a war the Kremlin believed would end in a matter of days with Ukraine capitulating. Now after years of death and destruction, the war grinds on with no end in sight as U.S.-sponsored peace talks appear to be at an impasse. NPR has correspondents in both Kyiv and Moscow and we hear from them about how both countries view the conflict now. -
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, and the fighting continues. Here's a look at where the war stands today. -
Tuesday marks four years since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. A look at the effects of the war and where the situation stands today.
-
The war in Ukraine enters its fifth year this week, with millions of Ukrainians displaced, hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed, and little change on the battlefield.
-
Struggling with stress and depression after years of war in Ukraine, a group of friends in their fifties and sixties throw themselves into competitive cheerleading.
-
In Kyiv, dance parties on a frozen river keep spirits — and bodies — warm after Russian strikes shattered Ukraine's energy grid.
-
In Kyiv, dance parties on a frozen river keep spirits -- and bodies -- warm after Russian strikes shattered Ukraine's energy grid.
-
The fourth winter of Russia's war on Ukraine has been the most brutal in recent times, with heat and electricity blackouts lasting for days as Russia repeatedly attacks Ukraine's energy grid. -
Russian strikes left much of Kyiv without heat, water and power during freezing temperature, even as Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. held talks on ending the nearly four-year war.
