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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Pope Francis visited the Greek island of Lesbos to focus on the troubles of migrants. Reporter Joanna Kakissis talks with NPR's Michel Martin about the trip and its possible effects.
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Pope Francis is back at the Vatican this morning after his visit to the front lines of Europe's migrant crisis in Greece. Francis took 12 Syrians with him to Rome as a "humanitarian gesture."
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The women, now in their 80s, say they live on Lesbos because their parents came to the island as refugees a century ago. Pope Francis will highlight the plight of all migrants on a visit Saturday. -
Emily is about 4 feet long, weighs 25 pounds and looks like a cylinder wrapped in an orange-red life jacket. First responders in Greece are beginning to use the remote-controlled lifesaving device. -
Engineers are testing a new robot rescue system in the Greek islands, hoping it will be able to save some refugees while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece.
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The thousands of Syrians and Iraqis trapped at the Greek-Macedonian border are unsure when, or even if, they will cross. Exasperated by the chaos there, they're offering their own solutions.
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The route by which thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants headed from Greece to northern Europe is now closed, leaving thousands stranded at the Macedonian border.
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Thousands of Afghan migrants are living outdoors in Athens after being prevented from entering the Balkans and Austria — in the past, the pathways to Germany, where many migrants hoped to settle.
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A ship with a multinational crew patrols the waters between Turkey and Greece to protect migrants' lives. They don't always succeed. "We can hear them screaming before we see them," says a volunteer. -
Thousands of refugee children are traveling alone through Europe. A 30-year-old woman helps some who arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos, a main gateway into the European Union for asylum-seekers.
