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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"It is very important to him to have this popular endorsement, even if it is a farce, even if it is a travesty of popular will," analyst Masha Lipman says of Russian President Vladimir Putin. -
Russia's President Putin has turned the Soviet Union's costly victory over Nazi Germany into a substitute for a national ideology. A 75th anniversary parade planned for May is now set for Wednesday.
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A Russian court has sentenced American Paul Whelan, accused of espionage, to 16 years in prison. He was arrested in 2018 at a hotel in Moscow. The former U.S. Marine says he was set up.
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The accident, 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilling into a river, took place at a power plant in a city north of the Arctic Circle. Local officials face criminal charges for their slow response.
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Russia's capital, the epicenter of the country's coronavirus pandemic, is lifting restrictions as the Kremlin prepares for a massive military parade and a referendum on term limits. -
More than 20,000 tons spilled in a remote Arctic region, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a state of emergency. The company says thawing permafrost may have caused the spill. -
Russia and Saudi Arabia, the world's two-largest oil exporters, stopped coordinating their crude production last week, sending oil prices tumbling.
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The Kremlin says warnings of Russian interference in November's presidential election are just "American paranoia." Some analysts say there's little the Russians could do in any case.
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A Soviet spy has died at the age of 103. Russians claim he saved the Polish city of Krakow from destruction by Nazis. Polish historians tell a different story.
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"America used to be a beacon of freedom, liberty and anti-corruption efforts. Now a lot of Ukrainians feel like ... we are by ourselves," says a Ukrainian political commentator.
