Joanna Kakissis
Joanna Kakissis is an international correspondent based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she leads NPR's bureau and coverage 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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President Biden often pledges to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia "as long as it takes." The risky secret trip to the warzone is aimed at showing he means it. -
Thousands of women who were raped in the war that resulted in Kosovo's split from Serbia are eligible for a monthly government stipend of $280. Many are reluctant to claim it. Only 250 have signed up. -
The Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center says a decade of work to reduce the danger from land mines has been washed away by the rising waters. -
The Greek government made grandiose promises to house Syrian refugees in empty resorts on Greek islands. It didn't work out that way. These days, Syrians have no hope for asylum or benefits there.
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Nikos Aivatzidis hasn't been paid since 2012 because his employer is in a dispute with the debt-ridden government. But he's afraid that if he stops working, he'll lose decades' worth of severance pay. -
The LGBT community says Greece is a macho country where being gay means being anti-Greek. Greece currently holds the EU presidency, and activists are using that to spotlight their struggle. -
The story of Greece dates to ancient times, but its modern chapter has taken a terrible hit since the 2010 debt crisis. One theater is trying to inspire hope through musicals that celebrate the last century, when Greece suffered through poverty and wars and persevered. -
Despite the enormous cost of hosting the Olympics, many former venues are languishing away unused. -
More than 40 percent of Greeks over 15 smoke, among the highest percentages in the world. Three years ago, the government banned smoking indoors in bars, restaurants and cafes — but the ban has never been enforced.
