B.C. university student juggles life as a war correspondent in Ukraine

As she watched her home country turn into rubble and witnessed how her neighbours were responding to the conflict, 21-year-old Anastasiia Lapatina pulled out her phone and tweeted -- giving the world a raw glimpse of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"It's difficult to see something so terrible and so objectively evil in front of you," she told CTV News.

As an aspiring war correspondent, she's tried to prepare herself for the worst, having read and watched videos on war, but says none of what she studied compares to what she's witnessed in person over the last several months.

"I don't know if I am staying strong or coping. I, very often, kind of go into a very dark place in my mind because it's very overwhelming," she said.

Lapatina studies political science at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020 and in-person classes were cancelled, she left Canada and went to stay with her mother in Ukraine. For the next two years she studied remotely and worked part-time as a reporter.

Not long before the war began, she and a group of journalists launched The Kyiv Independent. For the last four months she's been covering the war extensively for the outlet.

It hasn't been an easy task, but it's one that she finds necessary to do. And she says witnessing the resistance of her people has kept her going.

"I really care about human stories. I care about how conflict impacts people, how it changes their routines. How humans adjust to this kind of suffering," said Lapatina.

People online have taken notice, as she's garnered nearly 650,000 Twitter followers due to her reporting.

She plans to return to Vancouver in September for her final year, but in the meantime, will be staying at Kyiv with her mom, where she grew up, and continue writing about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.