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 poll published in September found only 23% of Russians have a positive view of Trump and 43% have a negative one. Also, 55% of respondents said they were hearing about Biden for the very first time. -
As Russians watch the U.S. election, the Kremlin is not hiding its preference for President Trump to win another term. It believes U.S.-Russian relations could get even worse if Joe Biden wins.
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The Kremlin has close relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkey supports Azerbaijan. "The Turkish factor in this war is obvious and looks extremely threatening," says a Russian political analyst. -
A long-simmering conflict involving two former Soviet republics — Armenia and Azerbaijan — has flared again. The renewed conflict threatens to draw in Russia and NATO member Turkey.
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Dozens of service members on both sides reportedly have been killed in violence that began Sunday in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The conflict has the potential to draw in NATO ally Turkey. -
The president of Belarus has been inaugurated for a sixth term in a secret ceremony, despite continuing mass protests by opposition supporters who say the recent election was rigged.
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Navalny spent 32 days in Berlin's Charité Hospital, 24 of them in intensive care. Independent lab tests in three countries confirmed he had been poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent.
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Speaking to NPR from Lithuania, the challenger to longtime President Alexander Lukashenko says "women understood that they are leaders" in the struggle. -
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the prominent Russian opposition leader was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent previously used by Russian agents, and says Moscow has some explaining to do.
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The Belarusian president appears to regain the upper hand after mass demonstrations against his reelection in a vote that's been criticized by the U.S. and the European Union.
