Lucian Kim
Lucian Kim is NPR's international correspondent based in Moscow. He has been reporting on Europe and the former Soviet Union for the past two decades.
Before joining NPR in 2016, Kim was based in Berlin, where he was a regular contributor to Slate and Reuters. As one of the first foreign correspondents in Crimea when Russian troops arrived, Kim covered the 2014 Ukraine conflict for news organizations such as BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
Kim first moved to Moscow in 2003, becoming the business editor and a columnist for the Moscow Times. He later covered energy giant Gazprom and the Russian government for Bloomberg News.
Kim started his career in 1996 after receiving a Fulbright grant for young journalists in Berlin. There he worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the Boston Globe, reporting from central Europe, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and North Korea.
He has twice been the alternate for the Council on Foreign Relations' Edward R. Murrow Fellowship.
Kim was born and raised in Charleston, Illinois. He earned a bachelor's degree in geography and foreign languages from Clark University, studied journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated with a master's degree in nationalism studies from Central European University in Budapest.
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A string of Jehovah's Witnesses have been convicted since Russia's Supreme Court banned the Christian denomination as an "extremist organization" in 2017.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is trying to fulfill a campaign pledge to end a five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine. A Russian-backed insurgency has cost more than 13,000 lives since 2014.
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Burisma Group, the company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter served on the board of directors, keeps a low profile even as it promotes itself as a major natural gas producer.
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In his last YouTube video, 21-year-old student Yegor Zhukov said, "Russia will eventually be free. But we may not live to see it if we let fear win." He was arrested in Moscow on Aug. 1.
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Lyubov Sobol's tenacity in standing up to the authorities, combined with a savvy use of social media, has put her at the center of attention as a new protest leader.
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As President Vladimir Putin approaches his 20th year in power, anger over bread-and-butter issues is sparking demonstrations across the country.
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A civic initiative is commemorating those who were murdered under the rule of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, whom many Russians now admire for defeating Nazi Germany and making his nation a superpower.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy's only connection to politics is the role he plays in a hit TV series about a man who accidentally becomes Ukraine's president. He's leading in polls ahead of Sunday's elections.
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Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union withdrew from a disastrous nine-year war in Afghanistan. "Those who fought are being looked up to again," says one Russian veteran.
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The brother of Paul Whelan, the American arrested in Moscow in late December, says Russia has given the family no information for why he is being accused of spying.