Kyiv journalist with ties to Kansas City cried as she packed to flee: 'What if I never come...

Anna Yakutenko, 27, was a reporter for the Kyiv Post when she was awarded a 2018 Alfred Friendly Fellowship, a University of Missouri program that brings journalists to train in U.S. newsrooms. Yakutenko spent several months of her training at KCUR.
As the war in Ukraine has accelerated, KCUR wanted to check in with our colleague. Yakutenko—now a freelance journalist—escaped Kyiv for Lviv, where hundreds of thousands of refugees are waiting to migrate into neighboring Poland. Yakutenko says she spends a lot of time helping friends find transit across the border or housing in western Ukraine.

We called Yakutenko in Lviv to get a sense of how she was doing and what her life was like.