Frederik Pleitgen is a Senior International Correspondent, based at CNN’s Berlin bureau.

He has been pivotal to CNN’s on-the-ground coverage of nearly every major story in Europe and the Middle East over the past two decades, including Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, multiple European elections, the Syrian civil war, and the Arab Spring.

Pleitgen has reported extensively on Iran from inside the country over the past decade, a period which has seen multiple major waves of unrest and protest and escalating tensions with the United States and regional rivals. He has secured numerous exclusive interviews with senior Iranian government officials. In 2025, he was the first Western journalist to enter the country since the start of its conflict with Israel and stayed to chronicle the subsequent US military strikes.

Pleitgen has also maintained a sustained focus on Russia, traveling frequently to report from inside the country on its war in Ukraine, the rule of President Vladimir Putin, and its domestic affairs. He was a part of the CNN team which in 2023 won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Breaking News coverage for reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Born, raised, and primarily based in Germany, Pleitgen also brings a uniquely German perspective to CNN’s global audience, delivering insight into the political, economic and cultural influences of this key European power. He played a leading role in CNN’s coverage of the German Bundestags-Elections in both 2009 and 2013, and in 2014 he reported on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, bringing his own family’s experience of the event to bear in his coverage.

In addition, he extensively reported on the Syrian civil war, traveling to Damascus, Homs, Aleppo and many other places in the war town nation. He was also the first international journalist to report from Damascus only days after chemical weapons struck rebel held areas in 2013, nearly setting off U.S. military intervention. Pleitgen was also in Aleppo when the city fell back into the hands of the then-Syrian government in late 2016.

In 2011, Pleitgen was a key reporter during the unrest in the Arab world, reporting from Egypt as the revolution that eventually toppled the Mubarak government unfolded and forming part of the team that won an Emmy for its live coverage of the protests in Cairo. He was also one of the first journalists to get inside the Libyan besieged city of Misrata.

Prior to joining CNN in 2006, he worked in the political unit at German public service broadcaster ZDF, and had previously worked at private news broadcaster N-TV as a reporter and executive producer. Pleitgen also has spent time working for RTL and TV Berlin.

Pleitgen studied North American Studies at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn and at Free University Berlin, where he submitted his master’s thesis on traditions in American journalism. He also spent one year studying at the School of Journalism at New York University and in 2004 received a fellowship for the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in San Fernando Valley/USA. Pleitgen was also awarded with the 2005 Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, which he spent at the International Centre for Journalists in Atlanta, Georgia. He is fluent in German, English and French.