Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv

The Guardian

21 hours ago

Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work.
Roshchyna was reporting on Russia's systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing.
On Friday, an Orthodox church service at the golden-domed St Michael's Cathedral in central Kyiv was followed by speeches on Maidan, the city's central square. Mourners included Roshchyna's editors and journalistic colleagues, diplomats, MPs and members of the public who came to pay their respects. She was later buried at the Baikove cemetery.
Colleagues described Roshchyna as a passionate and driven journalist, who pursued her work with such an intensity that she was often difficult to manage. She refused to take no for an answer and insisted she had to see the situation in occupied territory for herself. Editors, reluctant to accept the risks of her self-commissioned assignments, also knew that her work was shining a unique light on one of the darkest and hardest-to-access aspects of Russia's war.
'She is the bravest person, the bravest journalist, I have ever met in my life. That's not an exaggeration, it's a fact,' said Sevgil Musayeva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, one of the outlets for which Roshchyna worked for, in a speech on Maidan.
'Once she started something, she never quit,' said the Ukrainian journalist Angelina Kariakina, who worked with Roshchyna at the Hromadske news website. 'If she started a case, a story, we editors never had to remind her that something was happening further in the story. She simply never abandoned her characters or her stories.'
Roshchyna was taken captive briefly in Russian-controlled territory in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion in spring 2022, but was subsequently released. However, she continued to travel to occupied areas to bring back stories of life under Russian control, and was taken captive again in August 2023.
'Viktoriia was a person who didn't know the word 'no'. Everyone explained that she shouldn't go to occupied territory. No editors were ready to take responsibility for this, but she still understood that this was her mission, and did it,' said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an MP and the head of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on freedom of speech.
'She was genuine, and genuine people often burn with intensity, and with that fire they ignite everyone around them, but very often this passion costs them the most precious thing – their health and their life,' he added.
Roshchyna's death in captivity was investigated by the Viktoriia Project, a consortium including the Guardian, Ukrainska Pravda and other reporting partners, earlier this year. For months after her disappearance, there was no news of Roshchyna, who was held, like many Ukrainian detainees, without contact with the outside world. It was only in May 2024 that Russian authorities admitted, in a letter to her father, that she was being held in captivity.
Roshchyna was last seen alive on 8 September 2024, and there were rumours she was due to be included in a prisoner exchange. Ukrainian investigators are still working to establish exactly where and how she died.
Sources close to the official Ukrainian investigation disclosed to the Viktoriia Project that examination of Roshchyna's body after its repatriation earlier this year showed the hyoid bone in her neck was broken, damage which can occur during strangulation. The body was also returned with the brain, eyes and larynx removed.
Roshchyna was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, earlier this month. She received it 'for her unwavering belief that freedom will overcome everything,' Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Roshchyna spent nearly nine months imprisoned at pre-trial detention centre number 2 in the city of Taganrog, which was repurposed as a holding centre for Ukrainian detainees and has been identified as one of the worst places for torture and mistreatment.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's national police service and its chief war crimes prosecutor announced that Aleksandr Shtoda, the head of the facility, had been formally placed under investigation.
At the funeral, Roshchyna's editors vowed to continue investigating the circumstances of her death and the specific people who were responsible.
'Our task is not to leave the theme of the occupied territories, however hard it is,' said Kariakina. 'The best way to remember her is not just with words and memories of the work she already did, but to continue this work.'