Ukrainian parliament urges Zelenskyy to award Hero of Ukraine title to journalist Victoria Roshchyna

Suspilne reported the information.

The appeal was supported by 246 MPs.

Victoria Roshchyna worked for the media outlets Ukrainian Radio, UA:First, hromadske, Ukrainska Pravda, Novyny Donbasa, Censor.net, and Radio Liberty. In 2022, she received the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism Award.

What is known about the death of Victoria Roshchyna

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

On March 7, 2022, she encountered a battalion of Russian tanks that fired on her car. A week later, Russian soldiers detained her in the village of Vasylivka, but the journalist managed to escape. On March 11, 2022, Roshchina was captured again by the Russian FSB. She said that she was held in Berdyansk for a week.

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

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

The Prosecutor General's Office has opened proceedings for a war crime involving premeditated murder. According to human rights activists, journalist Roshchina was held in a pre-trial detention center known for the most brutal torture.

On October 11, the Prosecutor General’s Office reclassified the criminal proceedings regarding Roshchina's disappearance as a war crime involving premeditated murder.

Members of the European Parliament are demanding an independent investigation as soon as possible to clarify all the circumstances of the media worker's death in Russian captivity.

On March 3, journalists discovered that Roshchyna had been brutally tortured in Russian captivity — there were knife wounds on her body.

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