Five months ago, Russia declared Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna dead: what happened to her?

Ukrainian article of the week published in the 68th edition of the "What about Ukraine" newsletter on March 13th, 2025. The article was written by Anastasiia Moskvychova, Tetiana Kozak and Oleksii Orunian for Graty and was translated for n-ost by Tetiana Evloeva. Find the original article in Ukrainian here.

In October 2024, the family of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who had been kidnapped during her attempt to report from the Russia-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Region, received a letter from Russia.

This was from the Ministry of Defence, informing them of Viktoriia’s death and Russia’s intent to return her remains for a proper burial. Almost half a year later, this is yet to happen. The family has been unable to either confirm or debunk the information in the letter, leaving them in a tortuous limbo.

Ukrainian media Graty teamed up with Slidstvo.Info, Suspilne and Reporters Without Borders to analyse the testimony of witnesses who saw Viktoriia in captivity, uncover some of the circumstances of her unlawful imprisonment, and learn about the negotiations for her return.

Crossing Russia to the occupied territories in wartime

On 25 July 2023, freelance journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna crossed the Ukraine-Poland border to Latvia and then to Russia, to reach the areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation. There, she was planning to collect material for further reporting on the so-called ‘elections’ held by Russia, the aftermath of Russia’s destruction of the dam at the Kakhovka hydro power plant, and the status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The journalist shared her plans with her family on 4 August, during a call to her sister shortly after crossing the Latvian-Russian border. She went on to explain how she didn’t feel safe, as it took her several days to undergo Russian security checks.

It wasn’t Viktoriia’s first time in the occupied territories after the full-scale invasion. In March 2022, she was reporting for hromadske from the then recently-occupied city of Enerhodar in Zaporizhzhia, and was later detained by the Russian security service, the FSB, in the city of Berdiansk, also in Zaporizhzhia. Back then, the journalist spent ten days in detention, after which she was released, and Viktoriia returned to Kyiv. Despite her time in captivity, the journalist disregarded the danger, and made several more trips to areas occupied by Russia. In 2022, Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Liberty and Novyny Donbasu published her reporting on the situation in Mariupol and Nova Kakhovka.

Viktoriia’s 2023 assignment resulted in her final capture.

Graty spoke with one of Roshchyna’s local contacts, who met Viktoriia in Berdiansk on 22 August 2023. According to them, Viktoriia said she was going to visit Melitopol in occupied Zaporizhzhia, and they would meet again after she was back. On 27 August, she texted them to cancel their rendezvous and then she disappeared.

No one in Ukraine heard anything of her whereabouts until nine months later, when the Russian Ministry of Defence officially confirmed that Viktoriia Roshchyna had been detained and was being held in the Russian Federation. The Ministry did not mention her actual location or the legal grounds for her detention. She was held incommunicado, and without clarification on the procedural status of any case against her.

According to the Ukrainian human rights organisation Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), citing testimonies of those released from Russian captivity, the journalist was held at least in two locations: initially in Melitopol and then at the Detention Centre No.2 in the city of Taganrog (Rostov region, Russia) until September 2024. The same sources suggested that on the eve of the 13 September 2023 prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia, the authorities took Viktoriia from Taganrog to an unknown location.

“Prisoners were routinely electrocuted during interrogation”

The Ukrainian prosecutor's office received testimony from a woman who had been in detention with Viktoriia Roshchyna in Taganrog. For some time, the two were held in the same cell. Journalists were allowed to review fragments of her witness testimony, which sheds light on the possible scenario of the journalist’s arrest and the prison conditions for Ukrainian civilian hostages.

The woman said that Viktoriia spoke of being arrested in Enerhodar, and spent the next few days detained at what looked like a police station, before being transported to Melitopol.

“Viktoriia said there had been a bunch of cells, or a dungeon,” declared the witness. “The prisoners had been locked up most of the time, but they were let out for meals. As for the way the captives were treated… They were routinely electrocuted during interrogation. I saw several scars on her body. I’m sure there were some on her arms and legs. She also had a knife wound, which had recently healed, between her wrist and her elbow. That scar was three centimetres long.”

In late December 2023, Viktoriia was brought to Taganrog. According to a female witness, in March 2024, officers from the Russian Ombudsman’s office came to the Taganrog detention centre for a monitoring visit, and one of them was filming the entire time.

“The officers asked us if any of us wanted to contact our family by writing a letter,” the witness said. “So I told them I wanted to write one. However, the inspectors left, and we were never given a pen and a paper. I guess the guard believed that was excessive.”

On that same morning, according to her cellmate, the prison authorities took Viktoriia from the cell and locked up in an office on one of the lower floors. The woman assumed they were trying to hide Viktoriia from the visiting inspectors. That evening, the captive was brought back.

According to the witness, Viktoriia’s health deteriorated due to torture and psychological pressure, and she was rapidly losing weight. The detention centre’s administration was aware of the gravity of the situation, because the superintendent paid Viktoriia “multiple” visits.

Her cellmate recalled that in late June 2024, the journalist was hospitalised. At that time, according to the cellmate, the prisoner’s weight was dangerously low.

“She weighed up to 30 kilogrammes,” she said. “She could only get up from her bunk with my help. She was in a state where she couldn’t even lift her head from the pillow. So I had to lift her head first, and then she grabbed the railing of the upper bunk, and pulled herself up.”

The cellmate added that Viktoriia was then taken to a hospital, and placed in a different cell in solitary confinement after they brought her back.

“We could only hear that she was there,” she said. “When they took her away, they had to strap her to a gurney, as she was too weak to walk on her own. I guess she was able to walk again by the time they brought her back, as she had to somehow receive her meals from the prisoners. From what I figured out, she could move around her cell, too. Because the guards kept telling her, ‘Come here, we can’t see you eat!’”

This information was verified by another witness, who was contacted by officers from Reporters Without Borders (RSF). According to that person, it was around June 2024 that Viktoriia Roshchyna was moved from the detention centre to another place due to health issues, and then brought back two or three weeks later, and put in solitary confinement.

“We could hear that she was better,” the source told RSF. “She reported this herself during an inspection, and her voice was cheerful.”

Roshchyna’s former cellmate added that the journalist was moved from the detention centre in Taganrog to another place on 8 September 2024.

“They just give everyone a beating, indiscriminately”

Detention Centre No.2 in the city of Taganrog is located in the city centre, on Lenin Street. Since October 2022, Lieutenant Colonel of the Internal Service Aleksandr Shtoda has been the appointed superintendent of the institution. Previously, the centre was used for the detention of minors and women with infants. However, as reported by the region’s Public Monitoring Commission (PMC), about 400 detainees were taken out of there in 2022, and Ukrainian prisoners of war were brought in, including those from the Azovstal iron and steelworks in Mariupol, who were besieged by Russian occupying forces in April 2022.

For two and a half years, neither lawyers nor observers were allowed into this detention centre. According to the local media platform 161.RU, it was not until October 2024 when regional PMC representatives gained access, which came after some prisoners of war were transferred elsewhere. Still, there was no significant change in the conditions for Ukrainian detainees after that visit.

Junior sergeant Oleksandr Maksymchuk of the Azov Brigade (founded in 2014 as the Azov Battalion, and part of the Ukrainian National Guard) has publicly spoken about his torture in the Taganrog detention centre. He faced a trial in the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don, where, despite his combatant status, he was tried on charges of participating in his Brigade , which Russia has declared a terrorist organisation. At the court hearings in November and December 2024, he spoke about being electrocuted and suffering severe beatings in detention. As we went to press, Maksymchuk was known to still be held in the Taganrog detention centre. His lawyer has no access to the institution.

Other Ukrainian prisoners of war who returned to Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange also reported torture in the Taganrog detention centre. Media Initiative for Human Rights documented those testimonies.

Two military servicemen from the Azov Brigade, Dmytro Kanuper and Ivan Bochkariov, who were interviewed by Graty after their release from captivity, had been held in Taganrog for a year since September 2022. According to the former captives, officers of the detention centre used to beat the detainees during the semi-daily inspections, and during interrogation. They resorted to a variety of torture methods, like electric shock, starvation, and threatening the captives with dogs. The authorities also denied the prisoners of war access to medical aid.

“They just gave everyone a beating, indiscriminately,” says Ivan Bochkariov, “because they enjoyed it. The situation was so absurd, that sometimes it got to the point where you believed you were locked up in some mental asylum, where a bunch of mental patients were given free rein.”

According to him, special forces of the Federal Penitentiary Service mostly carried out the beatings, working in shifts. Their squads were also on a monthly rotation: every month, a new team arrived from penitentiary institutions from other regions of the Russian Federation. In particular, there were squads from Mordovia and Sakhalin. The faces changed, but their methods were the same.

The servicemen also shared that they could hear the screams of other captives as they were interrogated.

“There was a recreation room on the second floor, for the officers of the Federal Penitentiary Service,” says Dmytro Kanuper, “where any officer could make themself a sandwich or something. There was a fridge, a table and a radio. That room also doubled as their unofficial interrogation room. Once, I heard a woman being interrogated through the window. I heard her scream.”

Officers from the FSB and the Investigative Committee also interrogated the captors, and resorted to torture to extract the desired testimony from the prisoners of war.

Kanuper recalls the condition in their jail cells: they were cramped, suffocating and overcrowded. Women were held separately.

According to the serviceman, in September 2024, only the prisoners of war who were under investigation or already convicted [by a Russian court] remained in the Taganrog detention centre, while the rest were taken to other institutions.

“They just give us the runaround, stating that Viktoriia was never detained in Taganrog."

At the end of August 2024, Viktoriia Roshchyna was allowed to call her parents from the detention centre. Yevheniia Kapalkina, the Roshchyn family lawyer affiliated with the human rights organisation Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG), later reported that Viktoriia sounded cheerful and said that she had been promised her release as part of the exchange in prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine.

However, according to the Roshchyn family lawyer, after 8 September, Viktoriia vanished. The Ukrainian journalist wasn’t among the captives freed in exchanges on 13 and 14 September.

On 10 October 2024, the journalist’s father Volodymyr Roshchyn received a letter from the Russian Ministry of Defence dated 2 October and signed by “V. Kokh” (presumably referring to the deputy head of the main department of the military police of the Russian Ministry of Defence, major general Vitaly Kokh), informing him of his daughter’s death in captivity. This allegedly occurred on 19 September 2024, yet Russia has never given any further confirmation.

Volodymyr keeps writing letters to various agencies, and all he receives are replies with no real answer.

In mid-December 2024, Volodymyr received a letter from the Russian Investigative Committee stating that no criminal investigation had been launched into Viktoriia’s death. In late December, he received another letter, signed by the superintendent of the Taganrog Detention Centre, Aleksandr Shtoda, informing the grief-stricken father that — according to the registries of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia — Viktoriia Roshchyna had never been a prisoner in that centre.

“We exhausted every possible option,” says Volodymyr. “We contacted the FSB, the Investigative Committee, and every agency. On 23 February 2025, I received two more letters, one from the Investigative Committee and one from the Federal Penitentiary Service, both stating that there was no trace of Viktoriia in any of their registries. On 25 February, I got a letter from the Investigative Committee informing me that their military prosecutor’s office had sent it to the local prosecutor's office. They just give us the runaround, stating that Viktoriia was never detained in Taganrog."

“The investigators are simultaneously looking into the possibilities of Viktoriia being dead and alive”

Ukraine launched an investigation into Viktoriia’s case, which is currently ongoing. According to Iryna Didenko, deputy head of the department for international legal cooperation of the Prosecutor General’s Office, their agency is keeping an eye on the investigators’ progress, since journalists are one of the vulnerable groups of civilians protected under the Geneva Convention.

Didenko believes that it is impossible to determine whether that letter from the Russian Ministry of Defence that Volodymyr Roshchyn received last October can be considered an official statement from Russia, since Ukraine has severed diplomatic ties with the Russian Federation.

“The investigators are simultaneously looking into the possibilities of Viktoriia being dead and alive,” says Didenko. “Which is why our criminal investigation considers both possibilities. From the moment Viktoriia went missing, an investigation [into her disappearance] was opened under Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. After Viktoriia’s father received that letter from Russia’s Ministry of Defence, another investigation was opened into her possible death, under the more serious part of the article — Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which concerns violations of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder. As of today, we are looking into every possible cause of death, including torture and ill-treatment, medical neglect, psychological pressure, and death caused by poor conditions of detention.”

According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, the most valuable testimony that can shed some light on what happened to the illegally imprisoned journalist can be obtained from the Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian captives after they are freed.

“In such proceedings, the captives are given the victim status, while other Ukrainians offering their testimony are considered witnesses,” explains Iryna Didenko. “Of course, we do our best to be considerate, as those witnesses were also victimised, and hold that status in dedicated investigations into their cases. Almost every captive was subject to some kind of torture, inhumane treatment and violation of their rights, and they themselves require lengthy rehabilitation after they have been brought back home.”

In Viktoriia Roshchyna’s case, it was due to the witnesses’ testimonies that the investigators managed to confirm the journalist’s travel itinerary, dismiss some of the possible versions, confirm her captive status, and her condition in captivity.

“Russian authorities are responsible for all deaths in custody”

Bohdan Okhrimenko, head of the Ukrainian Secretariat of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, confirmed in his interview for UkrInform that Russia had agreed to free Viktoriia Roshchyna as part of the POV exchange last autumn, but later refused to release the journalist without any explanation.

“They postponed her return several times,” says Okhrimenko. “Several exchanges were held back then. There was the 24 August [2024] exchange where we returned our conscripts from captivity in Russia, and then there were two consecutive exchanges, of 13 and 14 September, with one of them including civilians — yet for some reason, the Russian authorities failed to confirm Viktoriia’s handover on that day.”

According to the official, after Viktoriia’s father received that letter from Russia’s Ministry of Defence informing him of his daughter’s alleged death, the Ukrainian side repeatedly contacted the Russians, asking them to return the journalist’s remains for burial. However, Russia keeps ignoring those requests.

“We are still working on repatriating Viktoriia’s body,” adds Orkhimenko. “Trying to persuade the other party to release her body. Only after that is done can we speak about solid facts. Today, we are only voicing our assumptions.”

The Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, in response to the inquiry by Graty, reported that they had contacted the Russian commissioner for human rights of Russia, Tatyana Moskalkova, to confirm or deny the information about the death of the journalist, but had not received a response to this day. Her office has offered no communication regarding the repatriation of Viktoriia Roshcyna’s body. The Ukrainian Ombudsman tried contacting the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross on the matter, and both have not responded to this inquiry.

On 24 February 2025, the UN Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement in support of the victims of Russian aggression, which also mentioned Victoriia Roshchyna.

According to their data, during three years of war, the Russian Government has returned 160 bodies of Ukrainians who died in Russian detention, but the real number is likely much higher.

“Russian authorities are responsible for all deaths in custody, including the death of Victoria Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist and human rights defender,” reads the document. “For almost six months, they have refused to return the body to her family in Ukraine, so that an independent investigation into the cause and circumstances of her death could be undertaken. All deaths in custody must be independently investigated in line with international standards, to establish the truth and ensure accountability.”

On the same day, it was announced that Viktoriia Roshchyna was named one of the two laureates of the Czech human rights award Homo Homini. The award ceremony will take place on 12 March 2025, during the One World Human Rights Film Festival in Prague.

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If you have any information regarding Viktoria Roshchyna or any other Ukrainian journalist killed or detained by Russia, please send a message to the Reporters Without Borders’ secure email ua-investigation@rsfsecure.org