Apartment rented by journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna who died in Russian captivity may have been bugged
It has emerged that the apartment rented by journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna in the temporarily occupied city of Enerhodar in August 2023 may have been bugged. Investigators believe Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity, may have been under surveillance from the moment she crossed the border with Russia on her way to Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.
Source: livestream of a meeting of the temporary special commission on Russian crimes against the media on 26 May
Details: Information still being verified by investigators suggests that the apartment that Roshchyna rented in Enerhodar on 4 August 2023 may have been fitted with audio recording and surveillance equipment.
The commission meeting also heard that investigators believe Roshchyna may have been under surveillance from the moment she crossed the border with Russia.
Roshchyna's father said earlier that she had stayed in Enerhodar before she disappeared: "She found a flat there and was planning to live in it for a while. But then she went out on her business."
He said a witness – a woman who had been held in the same cell as Viktoriia – also said that a drone had flown over Roshchyna just before she was arrested: "After that, a car drove up and Vika was detained."
Contact with Roshchyna was lost on 4 August 2023 – the day she rented the apartment in Enerhodar.
She had arrived in the city on 1 August 2023, intending to report on places where the Russians were illegally holding civilians, including the Enerhodar police department and the area around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Background:
- On 25 July 2023, Viktoriia Roshchyna, a freelance writer for Ukrainska Pravda, left Ukraine for Poland, planning to make the three-day journey via Russia to the occupied part of Ukraine's east.
- On 3 August 2023, she went missing in Russian-occupied territory.
- On 10 October 2024, Petro Yatsenko, head of the press service for the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said during the national joint 24/7 newscast that Viktoriia Roshchyna had died in Russian captivity. Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) said the journalist had been due to return to Ukraine as part of a prisoner swap.
- Investigators found that Roshchyna had been 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 had been held would hide her away when inspections were carried out. The body believed to be that of the journalist bore numerous signs of torture, as well as traces of an autopsy. Several of the internal organs were missing.
- An investigation revealed that Viktoriia Roshchyna died on 19 September 2024 in a pre-trial detention centre in the town of Kizel, Perm Krai, Russia. Previously, she was known to have been held in the occupied territories and in Taganrog, Russia, but the place of her death had remained unknown.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!