‘It was like a horror movie’: Ukrainian woman sharing scenes from invasion garners massive online following

Yaroslava Antipina's online audience read as she fled Kyiv to be reunited with her mother in Slavuta. In the weeks since she began her 'Twitter war diary', Antipina has amassed over 76,000 followers. (Source: Twitter/strategywoman)

Many Canadians are experiencing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from a distance, watching the horrors play out on television or their smartphones.

Yaroslava Antipina watched it unfold from her front window, all the while documenting the experience on social media as a way to show “how an ordinary woman operates in chaos.”

Antipina’s legions of followers on Twitter know her as ‘Strategy Woman.’ She tweeted as the first bombs dropped over Kyiv. The noise woke her up at around 5 a.m. from the apartment she shared with her 19-year-old son.

At first, she thought it was fireworks, something she said she’ll now forever be afraid of.

“I saw in my window a lot of people running with their children, with their huge suitcases and it was like a horror movie,” she told CTV News Winnipeg from Ukraine.

She sent out a tweet on Feb. 23, vowing to protect her city. The chief strategy officer for a software company had about 10 followers at the time. Her front window became her main vantage point to the invasion and the subject of many of her daily photos shared with her growing audience as part of her 'Twitter war diary'.

“I decided I need to take command of this. I need to show the people real life, the events of this war by my eyes, by the ordinary people, by an ordinary woman,” she said.

From there, she began sharing photos from the empty streets of Kyiv as military planes circled above, from the grocery store as panicked Ukrainians lined up in droves, and from the cold metro station being used as a bomb shelter as she tried to fall asleep.

Each tweet picked up more likes and retweets from people around the world. Her following ballooned from hundreds to thousands in days. It now sits at 76,000.

“I was really in a dangerous situation, and every time it might be my last minute because there were a lot of explosions, a lot of uncertainty, especially at night,” she said. “Still maybe that was the reason why I was interesting to others.”

She wrote many of her tweets while drinking coffee and surveying Kyiv from her front window, looking for signs of an attack. She dubbed the ritual ‘war coffee.’ Her followers, enraptured by her dispatches from a city suddenly under siege, began tweeting back pictures of their own cups of coffee in solidarity.

Eventually, Antipina and her son decided to join her mother in western Ukraine, as Kyiv felt more and more unsafe with each passing day.

Her captive audience read as she documented her efforts to get to the railway station. The underground rail lines were shut down and citizens were asked not to use bridges for fear of attack.

Eventually, a friend was able to give Antipina and her son a ride west. She didn’t know where she was throughout the journey, as she said many of the road signs were destroyed as not to give attackers any information.

Still, she found her way there safely. The picture of her reunion with her mother in Slavuta garnered 28 thousand likes and over a thousand retweets.

“I’m really delighted to have such a kind of support from people all over the world. Their solidarity, they really care about me and they share their moments of life,” Antipina said.

She continues to tweet from her new window, a place she says is much quieter than her previous one in Kyiv. She notes the silence is deceptive, as she knows her country remains under attack.

“I have no weapon. I have words. I'm fighting on the battlefield of broken hearts,” she tweeted.