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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This week, Israel will sentence a soldier convicted of killing a wounded Palestinian man last year in Hebron. A Palestinian shoemaker recorded a video of the shooting, which was shown at the trial. -
In Jerusalem, four Israeli soldiers were killed and several others wounded when a truck drove into a group. Israeli officials say the driver, a Palestinian man, was shot shortly after the incident.
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There's a church right next to the Christmas Market attacked in Berlin last week. Yesterday, the Pastor there delivered his Christmas sermon.
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Officers in Milan shot and killed the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack. Now there are questions about how the man, who had a criminal record, was able to get into France and then Italy.
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Subsidized greasy-spoon diners called milk bars thrived in Poland in the communist era. Their numbers have dwindled, but Poles are once again embracing them for cheap comfort food.
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The right-wing, Law and Justice Party says it wants to give Poles back their identity and values. Supporters welcome Donald Trump's election, but not his coziness with Moscow.
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Klosterheide, population 280, is hosting 60 refugees. Some locals are wary. "Those who don't try have no chance to correct their bad prejudices," says a local official who coordinates refugee housing. -
Voters in Austria choose a new president in an election Sunday. It could deliver the first significant victory for far-right, anti-migrant parties that have been growing in strength across Europe.
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Austria could elect the first head of state from a far right party on Sunday. Because of the party's Nazi ties in the past, this election holds special significance for Austria's Jews.
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The leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches called on Europe to show greater compassion for migrants, a move widely welcomed by migrants as well as residents on the Greek island of Lesbos.
