Julia Ioffe facts for kids

Julia Ioffe (English: /ˈjɒfi/; Russian: Юлия Иоффе, romanized: Yuliya Ioffe; born October 18, 1982) is a Russian-born American journalist. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, Politico, and The Atlantic. Ioffe has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and other news channels as a Russia expert. She is the Washington correspondent for the website Puck.

Early life and education

Ioffe was born in Moscow, to a Russian Jewish family. In 1990, when she was 7, her family immigrated to the United States. They settled in Columbia, Maryland. Ioffe attended Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School from which she graduated in 2001.

Ioffe graduated with a degree in Soviet history from Princeton University in 2005. Her thesis, "Selling Utopia: Soviet Propaganda and the Spanish Civil War", was supervised by Jan T. Gross.

While at Princeton, Ioffe was vice-president of the Princeton Israel Public Affairs Committee. In a college newspaper column published in 2003, she was quoted as supporting Israel's "methods of defense against terrorism", including the construction of the Israeli West Bank Wall.

Career

Ioffe worked for the Columbia Journalism School's Knight Case Studies Initiative.

In March 2018, Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, announced a book deal with Ioffe. The book, Russia Girl, was slated for publication in 2020; as of April 2022 it was due in 2023.

Ioffe is the Washington correspondent for the website Puck.

The New Yorker and Foreign Policy

In 2009, Ioffe won a Fulbright Scholarship to work in Russia. Ioffe spent three years in Moscow, from 2009 to 2012, working as a correspondent for The New Yorker and Foreign Policy.

Ioffe was a finalist for the Livingston Award for her 2011 profile of Alexei Navalny, then a lawyer and anti-corruption activist.

Ioffe covered protests and the political manoeuvring surrounding Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency, in her column "Kremlinology 2012," which was published in Foreign Policy.

In February 2012, The New Yorker published her profile of Mikhail Prokhorov, then the third-richest man in Russia who contested the 2012 presidential elections. "Are Putin and Prokhorov running for President against or with each other?" Ioffe asked in the profile.

During the most violent protest, which took place on May 6, 2012, the day before Putin's inauguration, Ioffe took a photo of a small boy on a bicycle with training wheels, facing a row of Russian riot police.

The New Republic

In 2012, Ioffe returned to the U.S. and became a senior editor for The New Republic in Washington, D.C. At The New Republic, Ioffe wrote about American politics, including about a brewing civil war within the Republican Party. Her 2013 profile of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul was a finalist for the Livingston Award. She also covered the protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

In 2013, Ioffe wrote about contracting whooping cough, although she had been vaccinated against the disease in childhood. She blamed the anti-vaxxer community for her illness.

Ioffe continued writing about Russia, including about the 2013 anti-gay laws and the Kremlin's ban on American adoptions of Russian children. In 2013, Ioffe visited Moscow to document what happened to the opposition after the 2012 crackdown. Among others, she interviewed Alexey Navalny, future presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, and members of Pussy Riot. Her article, "The Loneliness of Vladimir Putin," appeared in The New Republic in February 2014.

While covering the 2014 Sochi Olympics for The New Republic, Ioffe traveled to Ukraine, where pro-Western protestors had toppled the Moscow-friendly president. She predicted that Russia would invade Eastern Ukraine after its annexation of Crimea. She also traveled to Eastern Ukraine to cover the war in Donbas.

In December 2014, Ioffe was one of the many staff members at The New Republic to resign in protest against owner Chris Hughes's planned changes at the magazine. Her emails and comments were cited by Ryan Lizza in an article for The New Yorker about the changes at The New Republic.

The New York Times Magazine

In January 2015, Ioffe joined The New York Times Magazine as a contributor.

Politico

In May 2016, Ioffe became a contributing writer at Politico.

The Atlantic

On December 6, 2016, The Atlantic announced that it was hiring Ioffe to cover national security, foreign policy, and politics, with editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg describing her as "an indefatigable reporter, a gifted analyst, and an elegant writer". Ioffe joined The Atlantic in early 2017.

She wrote about The Atlantic obtaining a 10-month correspondence between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks, which played a pivotal role in the presidential campaign and was suspected by the US intelligence community of being "chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked". Ioffe wrote that "though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests… and shared that information with Donald Trump’s senior campaign officials".

Ioffe gained access to the entire e-mail correspondence between Trump's campaign chief Paul Manafort and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with strong ties to the Kremlin. According to the piece: "Manafort attempted to leverage his leadership role in the Trump campaign to curry favor with a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin".

Coverage of Russia

Ioffe appears on national and cable channels as a Russia expert. Since 2013, she has been a guest of Morning Joe, All In with Chris Hayes, Hardball, The Rachel Maddow Show and The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on MSNBC, The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Opposition on Comedy Central.

2022 Frontline PBS interview and program

On March 3 she was interviewed by Mike Wiser; on March 15, 2022, this interview appeared in a Frontline episode titled "Putin's Road to War". She discussed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said that Putin had miscalculated the Russian people's support for, and opposition to, the invasion.