Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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Hungary's far-right Jobbik party is expected to win a quarter of the country's seats in upcoming EU elections. The country is also experiencing growing anti-Semitism that has Jewish leaders worried.
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Sunday's referendum in eastern Ukraine comes as fierce battles are waged in the port city of Mariupol. A vote for independence may calm tensions, but it might also bankrupt the economy.
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As Russians celebrated their World War II victory, President Vladimir Putin made his first visit to Crimea since its annexation to Russia. Meanwhile, pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine are preparing for a referendum Sunday.
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Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent comments, separatists in some cities in eastern Ukraine say they plan to go ahead with their unofficial independence referendum on Sunday.
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The Ukrainian government says it has begun an operation to retake the eastern Ukrainian town of Slovyansk from pro-Moscow militants. Militants there have already shot down two government helicopters.
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The self-proclaimed governor of the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk announced that preparations were underway for an independence referendum. Separatists' intentions there appear to be unclear, and their opponents feel angry and abandoned by the government in Kiev.
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Pro-Russian separatists have seized government buildings in another eastern Ukrainian city. After Luhansk fell, Ukraine's acting president said his troops were helpless in the face of the unrest. He said he now was working to keep the rest of eastern Ukraine under his government's control.
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Reports of what transpired during the Ukrainian offensive are stirring some confusion. Fewer people died than initially reported, and life appears normal in the allegedly besieged city of Slovyansk.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is using a recent surge in popularity to crack down on opposition. Several proposed laws would strengthen penalties against protestors, and officials and local media alike are denouncing criticism of Putin as "unpatriotic."
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Diplomats from the United States and Europe gathered in Geneva Thursday to discuss how to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union spoke for more than five hours on the issue.