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 an interview with NPR, one of Ukraine's top negotiators Sergiy Kyslytsya explains why Kyiv believes it now has the leverage to force Russia into serious negotiations. -
Sergiy Kyslytsya, a top Ukrainian peace negotiator, says long-range drone strikes into Russia have strengthened Ukraine's hand and could compel Vladimir Putin toward a ceasefire deal.
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After a week of nationwide protests over the direction of Ukraine's military strategy in the ongoing war with Russia, the Ukrainian military has a new commander, Mykhailo Drapatyi. Here's what to know. -
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired the country's popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who pushed for innovation on the battlefield through use of drones and turned the tables on Russia. -
Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine's capital overnight into Thursday, with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, killing several people. -
Ukraine's long-range drones are striking deep inside Russia, up to 1,200 miles away, hitting oil refineries and depots. NPR recently spent time with one of the Ukrainian strike teams launching drones at Russian targets. -
At least two people were killed and 77 injured in the attack, which included the use of a powerful hypersonic ballistic missile called the Oreshnik, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. -
In a Kyiv apartment building housing the families of Chernobyl workers, a wartime tragedy strikes three friends preparing to mark 40 years since the nuclear accident.
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After spending most of the full-scale war in Russian captivity, the former mayor of a frontline Ukrainian city recalls his ordeal as he returns to a hometown deeply transformed by modern warfare.
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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.
