Zahra Ullah is Director of Coverage for International Newsgathering, based in Atlanta.

Previously Ullah was CNN’s award-winning senior field producer based in Moscow. Ullah delivered exclusive and impactful reporting across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Ullah has played a crucial role in CNN’s ongoing coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, contributing to many prestigious journalism award wins including an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, the Overseas Press Club of America’s David Kaplan Award and a Royal Television Society Television Journalism Award in 2023. She was also recognized in 2023 with a Gracie Award in the Producer - News category for her work in Ukraine and Russia.

From the moment the very first missiles struck in Kyiv on February 24, 2022, Ullah was on scene producing for CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance. Within hours she and Chance became the first journalists to meet Russian soldiers invading Ukraine at the Antonov airbase in Hostomel, where they witnessed at close range an intense firefight break out between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Despite Russia signing a law that restricts press reporting about its invasion of Ukraine, Ullah continued to report and produce in Russia for Chance and CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen. She was committed to telling the stories of Russians who continued to be vocal about their position despite increasing repressions in Russia. Ullah secured exclusive access to a Russian processing centre in Taganrog in southern Russia set up to process Ukrainian refugees who had poured onto Russian soil since Moscow’s invasion began. CNN heard tales of horror and hardship while also highlighting some refugees were reluctant to share their whole truth under the watchful eyes of Russian authorities.

In 2021 Ullah spent more than six months working to secure an exclusive interview with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, his first with Western media in some years and his first following his regime’s crackdown on protestors following the contested presidential elections in 2020.

Ullah also produced from Belarus in 2021 when thousands of migrants from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq tried desperately to cross into Poland. Ullah and Chance spent several days on the ground, getting exclusive access to a makeshift migrant camp at Bruzgi, continuing to report even as violence erupted along the Belarus-Poland border. The CNN team were awarded the Overseas Press Club of America David Kaplan Award for the coverage.

Ullah produced a 2021 investigation of an elaborate intelligence sting operation by Ukraine to lure alleged war criminals out of Russia to face prosecution for atrocities committed in eastern Ukraine where separatists backed by Moscow have been fighting for years. Ukraine initially denied CNN’s report, but eventually the country’s ruling part admitted it was a Ukrainian operation.

Previously, Ullah served as a producer on the International Desk based at CNN’s Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in London and CNN’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.

She has been deployed on numerous breaking news stories including to Seoul in the lead up to the impeachment of President Park and increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula; to Istanbul for the 2016 Ataturk Airport attack; and to London for the network’s coverage of Brexit and the June 2017 London Bridge attack.

Before joining CNN International’s newsgathering team in 2015, Ullah was a producer for Richard Quest, CNN’s foremost international business correspondent and anchor of Quest Means Business. She was responsible for booking CEOs and world leaders as well as field producing across Europe including Athens during the 2015 Greek Referendum and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Ullah attended the University of Warwick, where she earned a First Class BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She also completed a postgraduate diploma in Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff University in 2012.