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 and who swims in a mine-filled sea. Kakissis highlighted the tragedy for both sides abandoned in a hamlet he helped destroy, and she 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 鈥� 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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The Greeks have been eating octopus since ancient times, but there's an art to grilling these tentacled sea creatures. An octopus has to be dried in the sun for at least a day first. Otherwise, the flesh just steams and turns into "a rubbery mass." -
Greeks are growing weary of the nonstop international criticism the country has faced during its economic crisis. Some grassroots groups are trying to rebuild the country's tattered image. -
A traveling Greek exhibit on the Olympics included two ancient statues of nude young men. That didn't go over so well in the conservative Muslim emirate. -
Throughout the region that was once the Ottoman empire, people make coffee pretty much the same way: using coffee beans ground into a fine powder, then boiled in a little brass pot. But ordering "Turkish" coffee today doesn't go over well in some Balkan or eastern Mediterranean countries that have some lingering anti-Turkish feelings.
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Instead of stepping out into the world, many young adults are moving back in with family. "How can someone who makes 300 euros a month ever be independent?" one unemployed 24-year-old asks. -
Many are expecting Russian billionaires to flee Cyprus in the face of a tough eurozone bailout plan. But in the city of Limassol, there's a large middle-class Russian community with deep roots. Many are angry that their entire community is being portrayed as a group of money-laundering oligarchs. -
In a time of economic hardship and social upheaval, some anxious Greeks fear their national identity is under threat. It's difficult for immigrants to get citizenship, and a recent court ruling could make it even tougher. -
For years, most undocumented immigrants have been entering the European Union through Greece. They intend to settle in richer countries, but strict border controls and a broken asylum system means they end up not leaving Greece. Many are now turning to an EU-funded repatriation program that will pay their way home. -
This winter, especially when night falls and the cold worsens, a visible cloud of woodsmoke has hovered over Athens and other Greek cities. That's because many Greeks are now burning wood 鈥� in wood-burning stoves or fireplaces 鈥� to stay warm instead of paying for increasingly expensive heating oil. -
The laws date to the 1850s, but have rarely been invoked. However, two recent cases have put the law in the spotlight, and critics say the measure is being abused.
