Russians brutally tortured Ukrainian journalist over her way of thinking, investigator says

She shared this view on Espreso TV:  

“In my opinion, this was to punish her simply for her way of thinking—for the fact that Ukrainians, unlike Russians, are people who feel freedom of action, freedom of will, who believe they have a stance and can express it. Vika was exactly that kind of person. When we conducted our investigation, we interviewed her former cellmate, who cared for her and told us that Vika’s weight had dropped drastically. At one point, she weighed about 33 kilograms. Imagine—a 27-year-old woman weighing just 30 kilos; she couldn’t even stand up. We revealed this in our investigation published two months ago.  

From what we’ve learned—we work extensively with stories of Ukrainians who have survived captivity, or whose families we talk to when they don’t survive—we gather testimony of war crimes. This was in the Taganrog pre-trial detention center, one of the facilities where Ukrainians are held,” she said.  

Babinets noted that specific sections of this detention center are designated for Ukrainian detainees, both military and civilian. A marine who spoke to Slidstvo.Info journalists and had been held there described what happened, especially to women: “They put them in something called an ‘oven’—whether they actually burn them there or just use it as a form of intimidation, it’s terrifying. She had a cellmate who was placed in this oven, the kind that could incinerate a person.”  

“Electric shocks—basically every former prisoner mentions it. It’s now, sadly, a standard practice when Ukrainians fall into Russian hands and end up in Russian jails. From the testimony we’ve collected and published, the ‘oven’ story is just one example of how inventive the Russians are in their cruelty, in how they torture Ukrainians who think freely and defend their country. We’re talking here about soldiers, but the pattern is clear: the Russian jailers’ brutality is obviously directed from above. There’s a method to how they are instructed to torture Ukrainians—for being different, for thinking differently, for daring to embrace freedom. Viktoria went to Russia, including occupied territories, to report to the world and to Ukraine about what was happening to Ukrainians there. She committed no crime; she was simply doing her job as a journalist. And for that, they did these unspeakable things to her—things that you’ve listed, things we uncovered in our investigation into Viktoria’s killing,” Babinets said.

What’s known about Viktoria Roschyna’s death

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Roshchyna worked for the Hromadske outlet and wrote reports from the temporarily occupied territories.  

On March 7, 2022, she came across a battalion of Russian tanks that fired at her car. A week later, the Russian military detained her in the village of Vasylivka, but the journalist managed to escape. On March 11, 2022, Roshchyna was again captured by the Russian FSB. She said that she was held for a week in Berdiansk.

In October 2023, it became known that Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who received an award for her reporting on the war in Ukraine, disappeared in the temporarily occupied territories. Her family and friends reported that they had lost contact with her since August 3, 2023. 

In May 2024, Russia admitted that it was holding Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who disappeared in the temporarily occupied territories in August last year, captive. On October 10, it became known that Roshchyna had died. Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that he had received documentary evidence of the journalist's death from the Russian side.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office opened a war crime proceeding combined with premeditated murder. According to human rights activists, journalist Roshchina was held in a detention center known for the most brutal torture.

On October 11, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine reclassified the criminal proceedings into a war crime combined with premeditated murder.

The European parliamentarians demand an independent investigation as soon as possible to find out all the circumstances of the journalist's death in Russian captivity.

On March 3, journalists found out that Roshchyna had been brutally tortured in Russian captivity, with stab wounds on her body.

On April 24, Victoria Roshchyna's body was returned to Ukraine.

On April 29, it was revealed that her body, returned from Russian captivity, showed extensive signs of torture, traces of an autopsy, and the absence of several internal organs.