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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A Kharkiv metro station became a bomb shelter as the city came under Russian attack. Now, at the holiday season, it's also a Christmas village where kids can drop off letters to Grandfather Frost. -
Adults "can see us as serious or they can see us as a joke," one of the kids says. "A lawsuit is not a joke," her brother adds. The European Court of Human Rights has fast-tracked their 2020 lawsuit.
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Couples discuss how travel restrictions have kept them oceans apart for months. While they lobby governments to allow them to see each other, some have had to delay weddings or even miss a childbirth.
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A couple forced into a long-distance marriage because of a Trump administration travel ban on Muslim countries haven't seen each other in more than five months because of pandemic travel restrictions.
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Nations that are heavily dependent on tourism are trying to walk a fine line between the need to reopen their beaches and resorts and the risk of importing more cases of the coronavirus.
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The country has begun letting in foreign visitors, but those from countries with high COVID-19 infection rates are to be tested and quarantined. Greece has one of the lowest infection rates in Europe.
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Albin Kurti, ousted as prime minister in March, clashed with the U.S. envoy who is tasked with encouraging peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia. Kurti refused to drop tariffs on Serbian goods.
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The government says it will end its pandemic state of emergency on June 20. Rights advocates say this still won't rein in Prime Minister Viktor Orban's considerable powers.
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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic faced a wall of screens and launched into a campaign speech as people on the screens applauded and whooped. The virtual rally drew comparisons to Black Mirror.
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Instead of leaving super fans without glitter, glam and hard-rock hallelujah, the annual event now in it's 64th year, will air a live two-hour special available for viewing in more than 40 countries.
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The lawmakers demanded Thursday that European Union leaders punish Hungary's government for using the COVID-19 pandemic to grab power via a new law allowing the prime minister to rule by decree.
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An annual survey by the watchdog Freedom House says authoritarian leaders and the influence of China and Russia are undermining democratic progress achieved since the end of the Cold War.
