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Portrait of Valerie Hopkins

Valerie Hopkins

My work focuses on the wide-ranging consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in both countries. I was in Kyiv when the first missiles struck the Ukrainian capital on Feb. 24, 2022, and have continued to report on the war from both Ukraine and Russia.

In Russia, I have traveled widely — from the Arctic to Siberia to the Caucasus region — to document how businesses, cultural institutions, dissidents and ordinary people have responded to the economic and human fallout of the war and the extensive repression that has accompanied it. With many independent Russian and foreign journalists leaving Russia in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I believe it is increasingly vital to be on the ground to understand how ordinary people experience the war and the tectonic geopolitical shifts it has engendered.

I joined The Times’ Moscow Bureau in 2021. Before that, I covered Southeastern Europe for a decade, most recently as a Budapest-based correspondent for the Financial Times. My work there focused on the role of populists in the region, the increasing role China has played in Europe’s economic affairs, and the ongoing legacy of communism and war in the former Yugoslavia.

I began my journalistic career in Bosnia and Herzegovina reporting on war crimes trials for a local news outlet. I also spent four years based in Kosovo covering the decades-long consequences of war.

I completed my master’s degree at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where I won a scholarship named for Anne O’Hare McCormick, a New York Times journalist who in 1937 became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence. At Columbia, my investigation into female war criminals won one of the school’s top awards.

After Columbia, I was lucky enough to participate in the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) —- a two-week long study visit examining the role of the press in the rise of fascism, and the failure of the German, European and American media to cover the events that led to the Holocaust. In addition to being an extremely interesting historical exercise, it served as yet another reminder that what we write now will still be on the record no matter how much time has passed. FASPE honored me last year with their Distinguished Fellow Award.

In 2022, the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s gave me the Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence. I was also part of The Times team that won a 2022 George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for coverage of the war in Ukraine.

I am a proud Washingtonian, having been born and raised in the capital. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent since I knew that job existed. I went to The College of William and Mary, where I majored in international relations with a focus on Russian and post-Soviet studies and served as student body president. I speak Russian and Bosnian as well as a smattering of Albanian and German.

I take journalistic ethics very seriously, and I adhere to the standards of integrity outlined in The Times’s Ethical Journalism handbook. The choices we make every day range from seemingly minor decisions, such as not accepting fancy dinners and favors, to larger issues, like which stories to cover, whose voices to seek out, and how to find balance in our reporting. This is something I am committed to on a personal and professional basis, in addition to an ongoing discussion with colleagues and editors inside the newspaper.

Feel free to reach out by email, or use our secure tip line for stories, and follow my work on social media.

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