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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White European translators have hesitated to work on Gorman's poetry because of criticism that their race makes them inappropriate for the job. In Hungary, a marginalized community steps up. -
After a video call with European allies, President Biden said there's unanimity on the threat posed by Russian troops on Ukraine's borders. Some allies are sending weapons to Ukraine. Others are not.
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The teenagers on the Afghan girls national soccer team lean on each other as they adjust to a new life in Portugal, where they fled after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. -
Scientists are watching how Portugal and other highly vaccinated countries are faring against the coronavirus' new omicron variant. -
Greece, where 62 percent of people are fully vaccinated, has started collecting monthly fines from those who refuse the shots. Austria is also taking similar measures.
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People of the former Soviet bloc rejoiced when the Iron Curtain fell and embraced membership in the European Union. Hungary is an example of a growing culture clash in the conservative East. -
The first of more than 20 volunteers who helped migrants in Greece are going on trial, in what rights groups say is a politically motivated attempt to criminalize humanitarian work.
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Some Afghans evacuated by the U.S. are being held on a U.S. military base in Kosovo because of insufficient security vetting. Their future is unclear.
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After catastrophic fires razed the forest that was the lifeblood of Greece's second largest island, residents are planning for a hotter, drier future — and demanding the government do the same.
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As new COVID-19 strains threaten southern Europe's summer of recovery, tourism-reliant countries are scrambling to save vacation season while adapting their hospitality industries to the uncertainty.
