Latest news with #Roshchyna
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
PACE introduces Victory for Victoria Day in honour of tortured journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna
The PACE Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media has decided to establish a day dedicated to war correspondents and freedom of journalism in honour of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was tortured and killed in Russian captivity. Source: MP Yevheniia Kravchuk, Deputy Chair of the Servant of the People faction, on Facebook Quote: "An important initiative was launched today [3 June – ed.] during the hearing on my resolution on Ukrainian journalists in Russian captivity at the PACE Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media meeting in Norway. At the suggestion of PACE President Theodoros Roussopoulos, a 'Victory for Victoria' Day will be established – a day dedicated to war correspondents and freedom of journalism. This day in PACE will be dedicated to the memory of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was abducted, tortured and killed in Russian captivity. Unfortunately, her story is not unique. Every year, dozens of journalists are killed, captured or disappear without a trace while covering the war against Ukraine." Details: Kravchuk said that the aim of the initiative is to honour journalists who have been killed or have disappeared while reporting the truth. It has been proposed that an annual PACE resolution, a minute of silence during the autumn session in Strasbourg, and a side event during the session will be introduced. Kravchuk also announced that Victory for Victoria Day will be celebrated for the first time this year at the PACE autumn session (29 September-3 October) during the vote on a resolution on Ukrainian journalists in captivity. Read articles by Viktoriia Roshchyna for Ukrainska Pravda Background: Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared on 3 August 2023 while reporting from Russian-occupied territory. In 2022, Roshchyna wrote a series of articles for Ukrainska Pravda from the temporarily occupied territories. Her work included stories about life in occupied Crimea during the war, the pseudo-referendum in occupied Donetsk Oblast, and a photo report from the devastated city of Mariupol. On 25 July 2023, Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland, planning to make the three-day journey via Russia to the occupied part of Ukraine's east. It was not until May 2024 that Russia admitted to having detained Roshchyna. The Russian Ministry of Defence sent a letter confirming this 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. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, later said he had received confirmation of Roshchyna's death from the Russian side. The Office of the Prosecutor General announced that a criminal case opened in connection with Roshchyna's disappearance has been reclassified as a war crime combined with premeditated murder. Investigators from the media outlet found that Roshchyna was brutally tortured in Russian captivity: her body had knife wounds, she was tortured with electricity and Russian prison staff hid her from inspections. According to the autopsy, the body of journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna had numerous traces of torture and some of her internal organs are also missing. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MPs appeal to Zelensky with request to award title of Hero of Ukraine to journalist Roshchyna
Ukrainian lawmakers on May 14 backed an appeal to award journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was killed in Russian captivity, the title of Hero of Ukraine, Suspilne reported. A total of 246 MPs voted in favor of awarding Roshchyna the title. The appeal now has to be signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted she was in Russian detention the following year. Her body was returned to Ukraine in late February and falsely labeled as that of an "unidentified man." A forensic examination was later able to identify the body as Roshchyna's through DNA testing. Ukrainian officials confirmed Roshchyna's death on Oct. 10, 2024, but said that the circumstances were still under investigation. Russia claims Roshchyna died on Sept. 19, 2024. A recent large-scale media investigation revealed that Roshchyna's body had been returned with missing organs, possibly an attempt to obscure signs of suffocation or strangulation. The Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian NGO, reported that Roshchyna had been held in at least two notorious Russian prisons: Penal Colony 77 in Berdiansk in occupied Ukraine and Detention Center 2 in Russia's Taganrog. Both facilities are known for the use of torture against prisoners. Roshchyna was also detained in March 2022 for 10 days by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers while leaving Berdiansk in the direction of Mariupol. As a condition of her release, she was forced to record a video saying Russian forces had saved her life. Read also: What we know about Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna who died in Russian captivity We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A minerals deal won't stop Russia's war
News of Victoria Roshchyna's brutal death at the hands of Russian captors shocked Ukraine and the world last week. Her body was returned mutilated — eyes gouged out, brain removed — bearing evidence of unspeakable brutality. It wasn't an accident of war. It was a signature of it. This is what Russia does — and has done since its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. A day after the world discovered what had happened to Roshchyna, the White House celebrated a long-awaited minerals deal signed with Kyiv. As diplomacy took center stage in Washington, the killing on the ground continued, unrelenting and unpunished. This disconnect between gestures in D.C. and violence in Ukraine speaks to a deeper problem: the U.S. still treats Russia's criminal war of choice like a policy dilemma to be managed, not a strategic threat to be dealt with decisively before it spreads further. Since President Donald Trump took office, the policy of carrots for the victim and sticks for the aggressor has morphed into a cold shoulder for Ukraine and olive branches for Russia. The Kremlin has torched every one of them, treating overtures from the White House not as goodwill to reciprocate but as weakness to exploit. In March, Ukrainian civilian casualties surged by 50% compared to February and by 70% compared to March 2024. A missile strike on a playground in April killed 18 people, including nine children. The UN now reports near-daily attacks on civilian areas. This isn't peacemaking — it's sadism in slow motion. For eleven years since Russia first invaded, successive U.S. Administrations have failed to grasp that there is no 'conflict' in Ukraine — no tension between two sides with competing claims. Such framing is deeply flawed. Just as there wasn't a 'conflict' in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis invaded from the west and the Soviets from the east. Poland didn't need mediation between Warsaw and Berlin. It required help driving out the invaders. Eighty years ago, the world learned — and then promptly forgot — a hard lesson: Unchecked aggression only grows stronger with time. America tried to stay out of the war. At the time, that seemed wise, even noble. But history proved otherwise: Wishing for peace isn't enough. The war came to Europe first, and eventually reached American shores. Unchecked aggression only grows stronger with time. Not our war, some say. Quite right — it's Russia's war: soaked in the blood of innocents, justified by lies, and led by a venal thug. But Ukraine's dogged refusal to surrender reminds us what a fight for freedom actually looks like. And when we choose comfort over courage, don't be surprised when the revanchist dictators come knocking closer to home. The United States can and must stop signaling weakness and start acting with resolve — arming Ukraine, isolating Moscow, and demanding that war criminals be held accountable. Then it can once again claim to be the leader of the free world. But instead, Washington is taking the bait, sending envoys to shake hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and falling for the same Soviet-era tactics it spent half a century trying to contain. Meanwhile, Moscow is drawing America's rivals and enemies into its criminal war effort. It began with artillery from Pyongyang. Now, thousands of North Korean troops have been spotted in Russian trenches. Iranian drones continue to rain on Ukrainian cities. Chinese nationals have been captured on the battlefield, fighting for Moscow. Alliances are being forged, and every one of them pulls America's adversaries deeper into a war Russia claims to want to end. If this isn't a provocation, what is? In the United States, we judge new presidents by what they accomplish in their first 100 days. In Russia, the yardstick is a little different: how much a newly minted despot can destroy in his first twenty years. Given the dismal standards set by tsars and commissars, Putin is a resounding mediocrity, yet a danger to the world. Instead of pressuring the aggressor, Washington is threatening to walk away from negotiations altogether. What kind of ultimatum is that? Ukraine wants peace more than we will ever know. It agreed to an unconditional ceasefire within 24 hours and accepted the minerals deal. All Ukraine wants is to be left in peace, not in pieces. Russia, meanwhile, has spent nearly two months dodging that same unconditional truce that the White House put on the table. Even an agreement that heavily favors Russia, while offering Ukraine little, has been met with silence and bad faith. Moscow's objectives remain unchanged: domination through violence, imperial expansion, and erasure of Ukraine. And yet the White House treats Ukraine as an unreliable partner. This is self-sabotage wrapped with a bow as diplomacy is a flashing signal of American weakness for the whole world to see. The minerals deal was originally conceived as a mechanism to 'collect' repayment for aid, and looked more like a shakedown than a strategic partnership. The final version, stripped of its worst elements, may have merit as a long-term investment. But its timing and prominence, set against fresh atrocities and America's ceasefire efforts rejected by Russia, make it more of a distraction than a deterrent. We are not ending a war — we are indulging a war criminal. And the longer we pretend this is a conflict to be negotiated, rather than a criminal aggression to be terminated, the more respect — and security — we will lose. Submit an Opinion Read also: As Russia trains abducted children for war, Ukraine fights uphill battle to bring them home We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
EU ambassador calls death of journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna one of Russia's most heinous war crimes
Katarína Mathernová, EU Ambassador to Ukraine, has called the death of journalist and freelance writer for Ukrainska Pravda Viktoriia Roshchyna in captivity "one of the most horrific Russian war crimes". Source: Mathernová on Facebook Quote: "She was talented and brave. Only 27 years old. Her death is one of the most horrific Russian war crimes. Many things have shaken me deeply during the past two years since the EU sent me to Kyiv. But the abduction, torture, and murder of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna touched me not only as an ambassador, but also as a mother, a woman, and an admirer of unbreakable and heroic women who do not back down even in the face of military brutality. We honour her memory." Details: Mathernová added that Russia has killed 102 journalists and media workers since 24 February 2022. Read also: The Viktoriia Project: the story of the captivity and torture endured by journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna and thousands of Ukrainians imprisoned by Russia Background: Roshchyna went missing on 3 August 2023 while reporting from Russian-occupied territory. In May 2024, Russia admitted for the first time that it had detained Roshchyna. Russia's 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 for Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, reported that Roshchyna had died in Russian custody. Investigators from a Ukrainian investigative journalism outlet, found that Roshchyna had been brutally tortured while in Russian captivity: her body bore stab wounds, she had been subjected to electric shocks, and was hidden from inspections by staff at a Russian penal colony. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Telegraph
Torture signs on Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity
The body of a Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity showed signs of torture, including electric shocks, and was missing organs when it was returned to Ukraine by Moscow. Victoria Roshchyna, 27, was held incommunicado for months after going missing on a reporting trip in a Russian-occupied region of Ukraine in August 2023. Her corpse was returned as part of a February body exchange involving 757 dead Ukrainians, labelled incorrectly as 'an unidentified male' who died of heart failure. She was identified by DNA analysis in Ukraine. Ms Roshchyna's brain, eyeballs, and part of her windpipe were found to be missing after a Russian autopsy, her former colleagues at the Ukrainska Pravda news organisation, said. They said it could be an effort by Moscow to disguise her cause of death. Ukrainian prosecutors said forensic examination exposed 'numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment… including abrasions and haemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib and possible traces of electric shock'. Yuriy Belousov, who heads the war crimes department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, said experts had established the injuries were sustained while Ms Roshchyna was still alive. Investigators said that a bruise was found on her neck, along with a suspected fracture of the hyoid bone, which is a common indicator of strangulation. Mr Belousov said that the state of the body made it impossible to determine the cause of death, but Ukraine was working with international forensic experts to get more answers. Ms Roshchyna was deported from occupied Ukraine into Russia, where she was held without charge or trial. Thousands of other Ukrainian civilians have suffered a similar fate. Her father raised the alarm when she stopped responding to his messages while on assignment. Moscow admitted it was holding her nine months later. By September 2024, she was dead, but her family did not find out until they were notified by Russia a month later. She reportedly died while being transferred from a notorious detention facility in the southern Russian city of Taganrog to Moscow in preparation for her release as part of a prisoner exchange.
