Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was tortured in Russian captivity
Investigators of the publication Slidstvo.Info found that Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died in 2024, had been brutally tortured in Russian captivity: she had stab wounds on her body, was electrocuted, and the staff of the Russian colony where she was held hid her from inspections.
Source: investigation by Slidstvo.info
Details: Slidstvo.Info journalists, together with Reporters Without Borders and colleagues from Suspilne and Hraty news agencies, found out that the Russians first captured Viktoriia and held her in torture chambers in the occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and later transferred her to Taganrog.
Prosecutors say that Roshchyna was held in prison without probable cause.
Her cellmate said that the journalist was first held in Enerhodar (investigators confirmed this information from another source), then in Melitopol. These are unauthorised places of detention set up by Russians on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine (TOT).
Her cellmate also said that Viktoriia had been tortured and that the journalist had had stab wounds on her body when she arrived after being held on the TOT. In addition to the stab wounds, Roshchyna had been electrocuted, and her cellmate said that the current could have been connected to her ears.
Over time, the journalist began to lose weight rapidly, refusing to eat and constantly asking the jailers for help.
When the detention centre staff noticed that Roshchyna was losing weight, the head of the colony came to her cell and talked to her. She kept insisting that she should be released, exchanged as a prisoner of war or deported.
Her cellmate said that the Russian Human Rights Commissioner inspected their detention. Roshchyna was hidden from the inspection and transferred to another stock in a locked room.
The journalist was last seen on 8 September 2024, when she was taken out of her cell in an unknown direction.
Read Viktoria Roshchyna's writing on Ukrainska Pravda
Background:
Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland on 25 July 2023 to travel to the occupied territory. She planned to reach the occupied part of Ukraine's east via Russia in three days.
Roshchyna disappeared on 3 August 2023 in the TOT from where she was reporting.
Russia admitted for the first time in May 2024 that they had detained Roshchyna. The Russian Ministry of Defence sent a letter of confirmation to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn.
On 10 October 2024, Petro Yatsenko, the head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said during the 24/7 national joint newscast that Viktoriia Roshchyna had died in Russian custody. Defence Intelligence of Ukraine said that she was to be brought back to Ukraine in the near future.
On 11 October, the Office of the Prosecutor General reported that the criminal proceedings initiated over Roshchyna's disappearance had been reclassified as a war crime combined with premeditated murder.
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