The New York Times Company

05/10/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/10/2021 12:20

Valerie Hopkins joins The Times in Russia

We are pleased to report that Valerie Hopkins is our newest correspondent.

Valerie will be joining our Moscow bureau to work with Anton Troianovski and Andrew Kramer in covering one of the most important stories of our time: Vladimir Putin's Russia.

From her base in Hungary, Valerie reported on how during his 11 years in office, Viktor Orban, the far-right premier, moved aggressively to consolidate power, remake society and reinterpret history to suit his contemporary political needs. Traveling the region extensively for multiple news organizations over the years, she has also explored how the legacy of genocide has shaped the local community of Srebrenica and the politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina 25 years after the war's end.

But Valerie has also made clear that she has the broad interests we look for in foreign correspondents. She has found ways to bring her writing gifts to less political topics, like this piece about having lunch with Erno Rubik (whose last name should be familiar).

Before moving to Budapest, Valerie lived in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo, Europe's youngest country, working extensively across the Balkans. She learned to speak Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian and Albanian. Her work has chronicled the ongoing geopolitical battles in the region and the persistent lack of regional reconciliation decades since the wars that followed the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.

Valerie's interest in postwar societies in transition dates from her first job in journalism, covering war-crimes trials at the Bosnian state court for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. She also worked for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Valerie is a native of Washington, D.C. She graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and earned a master's degree from the School of Journalism at Columbia University, where she wrote her thesis about female war criminals. After graduation, she won an Overseas Press Club fellowship.

Valerie speaks Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian and some German. She starts later this month. Please join us in welcoming her.

-Michael, Greg, Jim and Kim F.