Journalist Victoria Roshchyna: disappearance, torture, and death in Russian captivity

Content

1. Life and journalistic activity

2. First captivity of the journalist

3. Disappearance, second captivity, and death of Roshchyna

Espreso will tell the story of Victoria Roshchyna's life and death based on investigations by the iStories journalist group, Ukrainska Pravda, Slidstvo Info, and many other media outlets, along with the organization Reporters Without Borders and the journalistic project Forbidden Stories. Victoria's example is not only about the story of one journalist who gave her life for the truth and her principles, but also about the thousands of Ukrainians still in captivity, whose fates remain in the shadows of war.

Life and journalistic activity

Victoria Roshchyna was born on October 6, 1996, in Zaporizhzhia. From a young age, she had an interest in storytelling. As a teenager, she began her journalistic career by covering court decisions and criminal cases. Her hometown became the starting point for her professional development, and her family was always an important part of her personal life.

Roshchyna chose journalism as a way to tell meaningful stories. Her colleagues recall that she always took on the most difficult topics and was not afraid to take risks. Natalia Humeniuk, co-founder of Hromadske Television, noted that Victoria had an "extraordinary sense of injustice," and she was unstoppable when working on a story.

Victoria Roshchyna worked with many leading Ukrainian media outlets, including Hromadske, Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Svoboda, UA: Pershyi, and Censor.net. Her reports often focused on life in the occupied territories, where she sought to give a voice to the people living under Russian control. She considered it her duty to tell the truth about the war, even if it meant risking her own life.

Roshchyna worked extensively on topics related to Ukrainian POWs. In particular, she filmed a documentary about Ukrainian sailors held in Russia and covered the case of Vitaliy Markiv, who was detained in Italy. Her work was recognized by experts in the field, earning her the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism Award in 2022.

First captivity of the journalist

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Victoria Roshchyna focused on covering events in eastern and southern Ukraine. She chose to work as a freelancer to have the freedom to report from occupied territories — places where newsrooms rarely sent journalists due to safety concerns. This decision brought her closer to the events but also greatly increased the risks, which could have cost her life.

According to an investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, during the full-scale invasion, Victoria made at least four trips to Russian-occupied areas.

In early March 2022, Russian forces detained her in Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia region, but she managed to escape by hiding in a basement. Her car was fired upon by Russian tanks — she and her driver survived, but they lost their equipment. Still, Victoria was undeterred and continued working in the danger zone.

The journalist experienced her first captivity when she was detained in temporarily occupied Berdiansk. She was on her way to Mariupol to document the siege of the city. On March 15, agents from the FSB and Russian armed forces accused Victoria of espionage. She was held for 11 days in inhumane conditions. Victoria later said she refused the offered food, surviving at first on supplies she had brought from Zaporizhzhia, and then only on sweet tea. Her strength was fading, but she remained resilient.

Under FSB pressure, Roshchyna was forced to record a video in which she claimed she had no complaints against the Russian side and that she had been "rescued." This video was spread by pro-Russian media. However, after her release, Victoria published an article in Hromadske titled A Week in Captivity. How I Escaped from the FSB, Kadyrov fighters, and Dagestanis, where she detailed her experience.

Despite her captivity, she did not give up and continued working on difficult stories about life under occupation, believing it was her mission to tell the world the truth. Just a week after her release, she told colleagues that she would go back again.

She produced reports on Russian-occupied Enerhodar, the sham referendum in Zaporizhzhia, and the abduction of civilians. As Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musaieva noted, Roshchyna could disappear for weeks, and then her articles would appear, revealing the harsh reality of life under occupation.

In one of her final pieces, published in Ukrainska Pravda, Roshchyna wrote about two teenagers who were killed in Berdiansk.

Disappearance, second captivity, and death of Roshchyna

In late July 2023, Victoria Roshchyna disappeared during another trip to the occupied territories. On July 24, she left Kyiv for Poland, passed through Lithuania, and entered Russia via Latvia under her real name. From there, she traveled to the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, heading toward Melitopol. She arrived in Melitopol on July 26. The last time she contacted Ukrainska Pravda editors was on July 28, without revealing her exact location.

According to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, Victoria stopped responding on August 3. She had settled in Enerhodar, found an apartment there, and planned to stay for some time. A witness later revealed that just before she was detained, a drone flew overhead. Shortly after, a car arrived, and Victoria was taken away.

For a year, her family, lawyers, numerous journalists, and human rights defenders tried to learn her fate, but were unsuccessful. She had become incommunicado — a term used for prisoners cut off from the outside world. Victoria was one of many captives referred to as "ghosts" of the war, their fates unknown.

Only in April 2024 did Russia officially acknowledge that it was holding Roshchyna in captivity. However, neither lawyers nor representatives of international organizations such as the Red Cross were allowed access to her.

An investigation conducted by the international Viktoriia Project uncovered horrific details of her imprisonment. After being detained in Enerhodar, she was taken to an unofficial prison-torture site in Melitopol, where the abuse began. Her body showed knife wounds, electric shock marks, and a broken rib. She was fed rotten food, which led to critical exhaustion. Until December 2023, she remained in Melitopol, but was later transferred to Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog, Rostov region, Russia — a place survivors describe as "hell on earth." It is known that in the Taganrog prison, Russians use dozens of torture methods on Ukrainians, from beatings upon arrival to starvation and severe psychological pressure.

As noted in the iStories investigation, Victoria told a cellmate that one of the soldiers transporting her from Melitopol to Taganrog offered her a deal, which she refused, saying she had “always stuck to her principles.”

The same cellmate reported that in Taganrog, Victoria was in critical condition: she had a high fever, abdominal pain, and had stopped menstruating. Despite this, she remained courageous, openly accusing guards of occupation and refusing to cooperate. She rapidly lost weight, hid and discarded food. Eventually, weighing about 30 kg and unable to stand, she was hospitalized on a stretcher in the summer of 2024. Six armed men guarded her at the hospital, but it's unknown whether she received adequate treatment. Afterward, she was placed in a separate cell. At that time, Victoria was even allowed a brief phone call with her father, during which she said she was going to be exchanged.

According to the investigative documentary Vika’s Last Assignment, the Russian side had promised to release Victoria Roshchyna during a planned prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. She was on the official exchange lists and expected to be freed. Initially, her release was said to be scheduled for September, then postponed to October — but it never happened.

On October 10, 2024, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War announced the death of 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna. Her father received a letter from the Russian Ministry of Defense, dated October 2, stating without any details that his daughter had died on September 19. Later, Russia claimed that Victoria had supposedly died of "cumulative arterial damage of the heart" during her transfer from Taganrog to Moscow. The height of cynicism came from Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, who in February (when Roshchyna was already long dead) officially stated that the issue of locating the journalist "was not being ignored."

After prolonged efforts by the Ukrainian side, Victoria Roshchyna’s body was returned to Ukraine in February 2025 along with the remains of 756 servicemen. It arrived labeled as “unidentified.” Only when pathologists opened the body bag did they find the body of a woman “in a deep-frozen state with signs of cachexia” (extreme exhaustion). A tag on her shin read 7390 Roshchyna V.V., according to iStories.

According to the Viktoriia Project, Yurii Bielousov, head of the War Department at Ukraine's Prosecutor General’s Office, confirmed that the examination of Roshchyna’s body revealed numerous signs of torture: abrasions, hemorrhages, a broken rib, and burns likely caused by electric shock. Additionally, her brain, eyeballs, and part of her trachea had been removed. An international forensic pathologist, responding to investigators’ inquiries, suggested that the absence of these organs might indicate an attempt by Russian authorities to conceal the true cause of her death, which was likely suffocation.

According to human rights organizations, up to 16,000 Ukrainians may be held in Russia, with 1,800 confirmed by the International Red Cross. Victoria Roshchyna’s story shocked many — it was covered by major international media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Euronews, and others. All emphasized the same point: the tragedy of the courageous journalist has become a symbol of the impunity and systemic crimes committed by Russian authorities against Ukrainians, from torture to deliberate killings, that continue under the cover of war.