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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In the 80% of Ukraine that remains in Kyiv's hands, two years of full-scale war with Russia have brought grief, destruction and, despite all, optimism. -
It's Russia's first significant battlefield win since last May. The White House said Ukrainian soldiers pulled out because they had "dwindling supplies as a result of congressional inaction."
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NATO is promising a delivery of a million drones to Ukraine, even as future U.S. support seems uncertain. Ukrainians in Sumy, a region in northeastern Ukraine, live under Russian shelling and deadly mortar attacks.
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Ukraine's military says it destroyed Russia's Caesar Kunikov ship off the coast of occupied Crimea, although Russia has so far not confirmed the incident. -
Ukraine's domestic arms manufacturers bristle at the notion the country relies entirely on military aid from the U.S. and Europe. The country's weapons development and production, they say, is robust. -
Ukraine's President Zelenskyy fired his top general in the biggest military leadership change since start of war in 2022. The two men had reportedly been feuding for months.
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Hungary was the single country blocking Ukraine aid in the 27-member European Union. Today, the country dropped its objection and the EU finally approved a $54 billion aid package.
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The Russian defense ministry said two missiles were fired from Ukrainian territory at the IL-76 military transport aircraft. It said 65 Ukrainian POWs were on board, headed for a prisoner swap. -
The once-sleepy river ports on the Danube River have become a main route for Ukraine's food exports — and regular targets for Russian missiles.
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Ukraine has shifted Christmas from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, further distancing itself from Russian tradition.
