Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was tortured in Russian captivity – investigation by Slidstvo.info

Investigators from Slidstvo.Info have found that the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died in 2024, was brutally tortured in Russian captivity. She had stab wounds on her body and had been electrocuted, and staff at the Russian penal colony where she was held hid her away when inspections were carried out.

Source: an investigation by Slidstvo.info

Details: Slidstvo.Info journalists, together with Reporters Without Borders and colleagues from the Suspilne and Hraty news agencies, learned that the Russians initially captured Viktoriia in the occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and held her in torture chambers there before later transferring her to Taganrog, Russia.

Prosecutors say that Roshchyna was held in prison without any charges being filed against her.

Her cellmate said the journalist was initially held in Enerhodar (information that the investigators confirmed from another source), then in Melitopol, in unauthorised prisons set up by the Russians on the temporarily occupied territory (TOT) of Ukraine.

Her cellmate also said that Roshchyna had been tortured and had had stab wounds on her body when she arrived after being held in the TOT. In addition to the stab wounds, Roshchyna had been electrocuted, and her cellmate said the current may have been connected to her ears.

Over time, the journalist began to lose weight rapidly, refusing to eat and constantly asking the jailers for help.

When staff at the detention centre noticed that Roshchyna was losing weight, the head of the penal colony came to her cell and talked to her. Roshchyna continually insisted that she should be released, exchanged as a prisoner of war, or deported.

Roshchyna’s cellmate said that when their place of detention was inspected by the Russian Human Rights Commissioner, Roshchyna was hidden from the inspection and moved to a locked room on another floor.

The journalist was last seen on 8 September 2024, when she was taken out of her cell to an unknown location.

Read some of Viktoriia Roshchyna's writing for Ukrainska Pravda here.

Background: 

• Viktoriia Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland on 25 July 2023 to travel to the occupied territory. She planned to reach the occupied part of Ukraine's east via Russia in three days.
• Roshchyna disappeared on 3 August 2023 in the TOT from where she was reporting.
• Russia admitted for the first time in May 2024 that they had detained Roshchyna. The Russian Ministry of Defence sent a letter of confirmation to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn.
• On 10 October 2024, Petro Yatsenko, the head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, confirmed on the 24/7 national joint newscast that Viktoriia Roshchyna had died in Russian custody. Defence Intelligence of Ukraine said she had been due to be brought back to Ukraine in the near future.
• On 11 October, the Office of the Prosecutor General reported that the criminal proceedings initiated into Roshchyna's disappearance had been reclassified as a war crime combined with premeditated murder.

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