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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Donald Trump Jr. found his meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya a waste of time, but her approach fits into a larger pattern of freelance political activity that has come to characterize Putin's Russia. -
"When you're not doing business, he is a very pleasant person to deal with," says a former Obama administration official. Otherwise, "he's a tough Russian negotiator, deeply suspicious of the U.S." -
When the two presidents meet Friday, the world will be looking for clues to the future of the fraught U.S.-Russian relationship. "Putin needs the meeting more than Trump," says one Russia expert. -
The Soviet Union built research institutes in Siberia as innovation centers during the Cold War. Since then, there's been a brain drain. Tech innovators remain, but some have faced legal challenges. -
Research institutes in Novosibirsk were built as innovation centers in the USSR. Despite the brain drain, scientists and techies remain, but life for successful entrepreneurs can be unpredictable.
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Novosibirsk is a key center of support for opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "I believed that Putin would make things better," a protester said. But "he made things better only for a few people." -
Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny is calling for nationwide protests and wants to be president. The Kremlin is scrambling to respond to the freewheeling weekly show he's started on YouTube. -
One of the enduring legacies of communist rule is a housing stock that was often hastily built and now is in various stages of dilapidation. But a "renovation program" is being met with skepticism. -
Startups and boutique designers make up a small part of Ukraine's economy. But they're making everything from socks to streetwear — and are gaining skills essential for the country's development. -
Ukrainian investigators are seeking to understand the former Trump campaign manager's ties, if any, to former President Viktor Yanukovych at the time when anti-government protesters were shot in 2014.
