Thomas Grove ’02 Wins a Pulitzer Prize with Wall Street Journal Team The Central and Eastern European correspondent’s article was a part of a Wall Street Journal series investigating Elon Musk that won best national reporting.

By Laura Lemon
September 24, 2025

When asked about that initial spark for journalism, Thomas Grove ’02’s mind immediately takes him back to a Russian language class at Washington and Lee University. The classroom conversation had turned toward exciting career paths, and professor of Eastern European and Russian studies Anna Brodsky mentioned that she had a former classmate who reported on the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. She then turned to Grove and said, “You could do that; you should be a journalist.”

“At the time, it kind of felt like someone telling me I should become an astronaut,” Grove said. “I had no idea how you even get on the path of foreign reporting. But it planted a seed. I am a really curious guy, and I love to write. So, after a while, it all did make sense – that ‘Wow, what a great profession this could be for me.’”

Languages came naturally to Grove, and he tapped into that talent by majoring in German and Russian area studies. But beyond expanding his German, which he started in high school, and learning the Cyrillic alphabet, he used those majors to cultivate the full liberal arts experience.

“I really wanted to just try a bunch of different stuff, and having those majors gave me a chance to really explore not just the linguistic aspects but also the sociological, historical and religious aspects of these different places,” he said.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Grove came of age during a period of immense rebirth in Central Asia and the Caucasus region. Knowledge of the cultural significance, and independent identities, of these long USSR-controlled territories slowly started to percolate into the West. And that mystery and unknown captivated Grove.

“These were places that just fascinated me beyond belief,” he said. “So [the liberal arts] was a real doorway into a what was a really fascinating part of the world for me.”

His majors gave him opportunities to tangibly take those liberal arts lessons to fuel another passion: travel. He spent a Spring Term in Moscow with Brodsky and then a summer in St. Petersburg with Greta McCaughrin, instructor of Russian. Upon graduating, he earned the Watson Fellowship and studied music in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. When he returned to the U.S., Brodsky’s voice still lingered in his thoughts as he marinated on ways to combine his hunger for travel and learning. He ultimately declined his acceptance into Harvard’s Russian Studies Program and applied to the Columbia Journalism School.

“I came back, got my master’s degree and then jetted off again,” he said.

He started in Istanbul, make shifting friends’ couches into beds as he pitched hundreds of stories to various news outlets. In 2006, he started working on staff at Reuters, living in Istanbul and then moving to Moscow in 2010. He followed former president of Syria Bashar al-Assad’s money trail to Russia and covered the annexing of Crimea – and much more – for the publication, before accepting the role as Russia reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in 2015, where he now works as the Central and Eastern European correspondent.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Grove, now based in Warsaw, was on the eastern edges of the country. He continues to travel there as the war churns on.

“The first year of the of the war was a slog,” he said. “It was just trip after trip after trip to Ukraine, which was extremely draining emotionally, physically and in every way possible, especially as you saw things slowing down – you saw both sides kind of dig in for this long, grinding war that it’s turned out to be.”

While Grove would love to no longer write about the destruction and tragedy in Ukraine, the liberal arts education he received from W&L helps him to continue to produce thoughtful, original reporting on the conflict and beyond.

“The whole liberal arts education that I had was all about looking at a problem through a number of different lenses,” he said. “And one of the great things that I think W&L taught me to do was to take a look at something through a number of perspectives – whether it’s the economic side of this war, how it affects people’s view of themselves and God through religion. It’s wonderful to have the mental flexibility to look at one thing from any number of angles and keep writing interesting stories about that.”

With WSJ, he has written beyond the news cycles and followed his sources on long-term investigative works.

“I feel really lucky that I can really be curious about things in the sense that [my editors at the Wall Street Journal] like and encourage well-reported stories that take time,” said Grove. “They will make the space for you and give you the time that you need to really sink your teeth into a topic.”

One such piece started in February 2024 when Grove received a tip that Elon Musk was having conversations with the Russian government. Over the next eight months, Grove and his reporting team of Warren Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold and Sam Schechner followed the story.

“The reporting was such a long time – just basically adding on small insights and small details that built out this picture of not just the fact that they were communicating but that there was a deeper relationship here at play,” Grove said. “It was really not easy because as soon as he became basically a player in the election, it became a really touchy topic. In D.C., our colleagues really had to bend over backwards, trying to find the right sources who could talk about this and who were willing to talk about it.”

The finished product, “Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin,” was published on Oct. 25, 2024. The story became a part of a Wall Street Journal series chronicling the billionaire called “Musk Above the Law.” That series won the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for the Wall Street Journal on May 5, 2025.

“It’s a huge honor. And I’m totally blown away that the work that we did was chosen for such a tremendous award,” Grove said. “I think you have to approach all big prizes like this with a little bit of humility. It’s easy to look around the room and see all the other great work that has been done and think that these people no less deserve such a great prize.”

“It’s a wild trip. It’s been lots of fun, and I wouldn’t have done anything differently,” Grove added when reflecting on his career. “I signed up for journalism definitely not for the awards and definitely not for a big salary. … But I’m in a spot where I feel like I can do my very best and hopefully do something important to help other people understand what’s happening at this very important moment here in this part of the world. As a journalist, you couldn’t win more than that.”

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