Latest news with #Viktoria
Reuters
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Russians hail beauty of Moscow metro on its 90th birthday
MOSCOW, May 13 (Reuters) - In Moscow, some of the best architecture may lie many metres underground. With its vaulted ceilings, marble floors and tiled mosaics of Vladimir Lenin and the Red Army, the Moscow metro is a crown jewel of the Russian capital. In the decades since Muscovites boarded the first train, 90 years ago this week, the metro system has grown to meet the demands of the ever-growing metropolis. Each day, millions of commuters in the city of 13 million crowd into the metro's 302 stations to ride on one of 16 snaking lines on their way to work or school. Moscow transit authorities pride themselves not just on the metro's cleanliness and efficiency, but on its beauty. "As a modern metro, it incorporates many architectural styles," says Yevgeniy Dovka, a Moscow transit official. "Each station is individual and practical, and has its own artistic solution." Many newer stations depart from the grandiose Soviet style and feature decorations inspired by modern city life. The recently-completed station in Nagatinsky Zaton in southern Moscow, for example, displays mosaics of fish found in local rivers. Some daily riders, such as Viktoria, 25, say they prefer the older styles. "Modern is not exactly my jam," she says. Travelling via an older station "feels like you've been to a museum." Over the decades, the metro has witnessed important events in Soviet political history. In Mayakovskaya station, tour groups now crane their necks towards mosaics celebrating Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War. Amidst that war, Soviet leader Josef Stalin convened a meeting of the Moscow City Council in the station's main hall, where he addressed party leaders and ordinary citizens sheltering from Nazi bombs from a lectern before treating them to a buffet. These days, Muscovites still find themselves wowed by the metro's rich history and beauty. "I feel proud of it," Alina, 18, says. "Sometimes I think of moving somewhere (else), but I don't know how I'd live in a place without a metro."
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
These Ukrainian women banded together after fleeing war. The U.S. may send them back.
One Sunday in the middle of February, Julia got a call from her good friend Viktoria, a fellow Ukrainian immigrant who was 33 weeks pregnant with her third child. Viktoria's water had just broken. Her husband, Vladislav, couldn't leave work. Julia sprang into helper mode. 'I was so worried because it was my first time' helping someone who's about to give birth, Julia said. She brought along a translator to ensure she and Viktoria could understand the English-speaking doctor. She stood by Viktoria's side, holding her hand and encouraging her through contractions. At the end of the night, Viktoria gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Emily. Rushing to help other women is a common occurrence for Julia and the other community health workers at a nonprofit organization that helps refugee women and their families in and around Decatur, Georgia, acclimate to their new country. In some cases, Julia's work week extends into the weekend, especially when one of her 40 clients or someone in their families needs translation assistance during a medical emergency, access to transportation or help understanding their insurance coverage. 'Sometimes, my job is 94 hours,' she said. 'Our work is very interesting, but it's so important to help these families.' Since the early 2000s, the organization has served thousands of refugee and immigrant women by offering workshops, mental health services and networking opportunities. Its leaders asked The 19th to withhold the organization's name out of concern that using it might jeopardize the funding they receive from the federal government, given the uncertainty of the current political climate. Julia is also going by a name other than her own because she works at the organization, and The 19th agreed to withhold the last name for Viktoria and Vladislav because of their status. The organization's clients are Afghans, who arrived in Georgia in 2021 after the Taliban took over their home country; Central Africans, who were pushed out in large part because of the volatile security situation in their country; and Ukrainians, who fled a war that has been raging for three years. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization bolstered its services to help women immigrants in metro Atlanta who needed to navigate conversations with health care providers. Community health workers had been an early part of the network, and the need for translation services and community connection led the organization to reintroduce the program, the organization's program coordinator of community health direction told The 19th. Five years later, community health workers like Julia are the group's heart. The group serves more than 2,000 women immigrants and refugees each year and having representation is crucial to the work; 90 percent of the organization's staff are foreign-born. The community health workers are now more necessary than ever. As the Trump administration implements more obstacles for refugees' pathways to citizenship and makes changes to the Temporary Protected Services program (TPS), which allows immigrants from certain countries to live in the United States legally for a period of time, many families, including Viktoria's, are left with fewer options and unsure of what's ahead. Ukrainian refugees began arriving in the United States in 2022, when then-President Joe Biden created the Uniting for Ukraine program, granting Ukrainian citizens and their immediate families temporary stay in the country through what is known as humanitarian parole. In 2023, the Biden administration extended humanitarian parole to Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans, both as a form of temporary relief from the unrest and instability in these countries and to curb the number of immigrants illegally entering the United States from Mexico. Then came President Donald Trump, who, earlier this year, shortened the length of the protected status granted to these foreign nationals. Nicaraguans now have protected status until July 5, Haitians have it until August 3 and Venezuelans until September 10, according to guidance from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). What will happen to the program for immigrants from other countries, including Ukraine, is unclear. The fates of as many as 532,000 people are in limbo, said Judith Delus Montgomery, an immigration lawyer from Clarkston, Georgia, a small city known as the 'Ellis Island of the South' due to its welcoming of more than 60,000 refugees since the 1970s. Her firm, Delus Montgomery, LLC, has served thousands of immigrant families in the metro Atlanta area for 13 years, and Montgomery herself has worked closely with the Haitian community. Born in the Bahamas to Haitian immigrants, Montgomery said she became a U.S. citizen through her parents when she was a toddler. She said that her personal experience as an immigrant and naturalized citizen inspires her work. Since the Trump administration announced it would shorten the protections for Haitian immigrants, which would have otherwise ended on February 3, 2026, Montgomery's days have been filled with anxious phone calls from clients. She has been working around the clock to help them find new ways to stay in the country legally and find other paths to citizenship. 'People are in an uproar,' she said. 'We have been inundated with phone calls.' With the end of their TPS period quickly approaching, immigrants have only two other options to stay in the United States, Montgomery said. They can adjust their status through a family member who is already a citizen or, if that isn't an option, they can petition for asylum. But that is a tough road to follow. According to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, more than 3 million active cases are pending before the Immigration Court. Of those, more than 2 million are formal asylum applications from immigrants who are awaiting hearings and decisions on their cases. As reported by the National Immigration Forum, the average wait time for asylum applicants to be seen before USCIS is more than six years, and some wait much longer. A lot of the people living in the United States under temporary protection don't have a home to go back to. 'Now you have all these folks here and don't have a pathway to citizenship [but] they absolutely can't go back. These folks are in a precarious situation,' Montgomery said. That includes the Ukrainians affected by the Trump administration's impending changes to their protected status and who can no longer apply for temporary protected status or for the Uniting for Ukraine program. Before leaving office, Biden extended Ukrainians' stay in the United States until October 2026, but this is likely to change once the Trump administration completes its review of the parole programs, as outlined in the executive action called 'Securing Our Borders.' Reuters estimates that as many as 240,000 Ukrainians have or will be affected by the changes. Julia and Viktoria are among them. Julia's life is defined in periods: there's before the war and then there's everything that has happened since. Before the war, Julia worked in sales and got some experience in the nonprofit space too, in a role where she helped organize games, workshops and training for college students. She lived in an apartment complex in Lutsk with her parents, brother and nephews. When the war began, she assembled a go-bag — full of medicine, warm clothes, her passport and money — and kept it close at all times in case she had to evacuate. Day in and day out, Julia traveled to and from work until curfew arrived in the evening. When Russian forces attacked their city, she and her family huddled together in basements, holding each other tightly as they waited for the blaring emergency alarms to end. Julia had friends in the United States and they kept encouraging her to take advantage of the humanitarian program and relocate. It was a heartwrenching decision: Her parents didn't want to leave Ukraine and she didn't want to leave her parents. But she did move eventually. Julia arrived in the United States in January 2023, alone. Her parents, brother and nephews stayed in Ukraine. During an interview in mid-February at the organization where she works, Julia said that she, like many of her clients, was nervous and stressed about what she needed to do next. Because the Temporary Protected Status program isn't accepting any new applications, families like Julia's have been essentially broken up since none of those who stayed in Ukraine are able to legally enter the United States. And at least some of those who have relocated to the United States can't return home because their homes are now in Russian-occupied areas — Russian soldiers might be eating off their plates, wearing their clothes, sleeping in their bedrooms. 'Our cases are frozen,' Julia said. Their lives are frozen. Then there are couples like Viktoria and Vladislav. She is Ukranian. He is Russian. They were each living in their respective home country when they met on an online dating site for Christians eight years ago. After their pastors gave them the OK to meet in person, the two connected quickly and fell in love. Soon after, Viktoria moved to Russia and she and Vladislav got married. After the war started, the couple and their first child, a girl, moved to Turkey, where their second child was born. Viktoria didn't feel safe as a Ukrainian living in Russia, especially after she shared her sentiments on the war on social media. The family lived in Turkey for 11 months. A close friend who lived in the United States told Viktoria and Vladislav about the humanitarian program. In 2023, the parents and their children moved to Dunwoody. If the Trump administration forces them to leave, Viktoria and the couple's middle child aren't allowed to live in Russia, where Vladislav and the eldest daughter are from, because of their Ukrainian citizenship. In turn, Vladislav and the eldest daughter may not be able to live in Ukraine. Will the youngest child, the one whom Julia watched come into this world, be able to relocate to either country? 'You don't know what you need to do,' Vladislav said. Emily's path is less clear cut, he said, 'because she's an American citizen, and American governments don't recommend going to Ukraine because of the war or Russia because it isn't safe.' There's also a bigger financial implication of Trump's approach to immigration. Across the country, agencies that help immigrants are struggling to keep their doors open or have laid off staff due to funding cuts. The organization where Julia works has also been impacted. While it isn't a refugee resettlement agency, the organization's program coordinator said its social adjustment and economic empowerment services are funded by federal grants that come through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Department of Health and Human Services. These grants, which account for almost half of the organization's annual funding, are at risk. If they're gone, cuts are all but inevitable. These cuts would happen just as the changes to immigration policies under Trump have amplified the need for the types of services the organization offers. With resettlement agencies shutting their doors, the group has received an influx of new clients whose original case managers are no longer available. As Julia and her fellow community health workers help more and more people, the program coordinator said she has tried to remind them of the importance of self-care. But that can be difficult to balance when it's not only more clients that they're seeing, but also clients facing more severe challenges. In just two weeks, the program coordinator said, the organization had helped more than 100 families get utility assistance, an increase that reflects a surge in housing issues and the number of families the organization has provided services for since the Trump administration began making changes. As the uncertainty lingers and changes begin to take effect, the program coordinator anticipates an increase in homelessness among the families the organization helps, more difficulty in finding work and exacerbated mental health struggles. Those who had to leave their native countries and embraced the United States as their home are now realizing their new life isn't actually safe. Amid the struggles, the community has banded together to lend a hand. The organization has made room for them by ramping up its volunteer program that delivers food to families. It's also accepting more donations and it has stepped up its outreach allies to help those who need legal assistance, the program coordinator said. Julia remembers feeling lost when she first arrived in Atlanta. She missed her family and wanted to go back to Ukraine, but a friend encouraged her to wait a year before making any big decisions. In many ways, it's her work at the organization that has rooted her in the United States and kept her grounded in these times. She was taking English as a Second Language courses at Georgia State University when a teacher asked if she'd be interested in connecting with other Ukrainian refugees in the community. She agreed and was hired after her first interview with the organization. Immersing herself in the world of clients — a world so much like her own — was a whirlwind experience, but Julia enjoys helping and connecting with others. As she likes to say, she didn't find the organization. It found her. Julia said that as time has passed since Trump announced changes to the Temporary Protected Status program, some of her clients have been getting in contact with lawyers to see what their options might be. Faced with the possibility of uprooting their families and starting their lives over once again, many have been feeling depressed and overwhelmed. Julia is also contemplating what might happen to her. In January, she applied to continue her Temporary Protected Status, but because cases like hers are paused, she hasn't heard any updates. Her original stay was set to end April 19. Depending on what the Trump administration does next, she said, she might return to Ukraine to be with her family or continue her work in Atlanta. In the meantime, it's the connection to her community that keeps her going. There's her friendship with Viktoria, whose family is one of the many that remind her that life in the United States can be beautiful and complicated all the same. 'Every person I've met has a deep story of fighting to survive, to help, to support,' she said. 'Sometimes life is very easy, but sometimes it's very complicated and heavy.' She paused; looked at Viktoria and Vladislav, who were watching their second daughter as she played on the playground outside of the organization's office; and said, 'But this country supports us and I hope this country will continue to support us.' The post These Ukrainian women banded together after fleeing war. The U.S. may send them back. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Daily Mirror
30-04-2025
- Daily Mirror
Female Ukrainian journalist killed by Russia sent back marked as 'unnamed male'
An award-winning journalist from Ukraine who was kidnapped and killed by the Russians was sent back to her home country without eyes or a brain in a body bag marked as an 'unnamed male', it has been revealed. Viktoria Roshchyna's brain, eyes, and larynx had been removed before her body was sent back to Ukraine in February, two and a half years after she went missing in Russian-occupied territories in August 2023. It is likely the body parts were removed in a bid to obscure the torture that she is most likely to have suffered, a report into her death has revealed. Her body had been labelled as an 'unidentified male' and was handed over, during an exchange of 757 Ukrainian bodies. The 27-year-old's body was much smaller and lighter than the others, according to the report. The gruesome treatment of her body could have been done to hide how badly she was treated during her time in Russian captivity. The head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office's war crimes department, Yuriy Belousov, told news outlet Pravda, that her body still had signs of torture, including a broken rib, and possible evidence that she was given electric shocks. A bruise on her neck also pointed to possible strangulation, the report noted. "The forensic examination revealed numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment on the victim's body, including abrasions and haemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on her feet," Belousov wrote. He added that the body had been returned "with signs of an autopsy that was performed before arrival in Ukraine" and missing certain organs. Due to the mummified state of the body, the official cause of death is still undetermined the report said, and further tests will be carried out by the Ukrainian authorities. However, an unusual Russian marking 'SPAS', possibly meaning 'total arterial damage to the heart', was found on the Russian listing that could reflect a cause of death. Forbidden Stories reported that the acronym "NM SPAS 757" was scrawled on the bag, translating to "Unnamed Male, Extensive Damage to the Coronary Artiers, [Body Number] 757." Despite the bodybag identifying her remains as an 'unnamed male', a tag was attached to Viktoria's shin bearing her first initials and surname. Viktoria's dad has also requested additional foreign examers, prosecutors told Ukrainian outlet Hromadske. Russia only confirmed that she had been detained in May 2024, nine months after she disappeared. Viktoria had travelled to Zaporizhzhia, in Russia-occupied Ukraine, in the summer of 2023 to report on the treatment of Ukrainians in Russia's prisons there. What happened between her arrival and disappearance in August remains unclear, despite her family's desperate attempts to find out what happened to her. She was taken to a brutal penal colony in Berdyansk, eastern Ukraine known as one of Russia's harshest facilities, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights. She then spent time in a pre-trial detention centre in Taganrog, just over the border in Russia before dying during transportation to Moscow. "Viktoria was the only reporter who covered the occupied territories. For her, it was a mission," her editor at Ukrainska, Sevgil Musaieva, said: "She was the bridge between Ukraine and those territories who provided this critical information about life [there]. After she disappeared, there is no coverage of what is happening." Viktoria wrote for a number of Ukrainian outlets as well as Radio Free Europe. She was previously held by the Russians for 10 days in the early days of the war in March 2022, earning the International Women's Media Foundation's 2022 Courage in Journalism Award. When she returned from that trip in 2022, editors, colleagues and family all urged her to stop going to the occupied area - but she didn't. In July 2023, she prepared for another trip, which would be her last, with a clear vision in mind. Musaieva said: "We discussed the places where Ukrainians could be tortured, and she gave me her kind of vision of how she sees the topic. She wanted to find those places and the people involved." A source living in the occupied zone who had met her twice in 2023 described Viktoria as "closed off" when she arrived for the last time. He said: "She didn't say much. I don't know what she was afraid of, maybe of being captured by video cameras or something." Olga, another source, told Forbidden Stories that Viktoria had start compiling a list of FSB agents. The source, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said: "She was telling me about her experience in captivity, asking me everything, and I realised that she had a lot of information, her own database, about FSB agents."
Metro
30-04-2025
- Metro
Ukrainian journalist's body returned from Russia 'without eyes or brain'
The body of a Ukrainian journalist killed in Russia was repatriated without her eyes or brain, an international investigation has found. Viktoria Roshchyna disappeared in the summer of 2023 near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, on what was at least her fourth trip to the occupied territories. She was held in an unofficial detention centre in Rostov for at least a year, unable to contact the outside world aside from one four-minute phone conversation with her parents. Viktoria died aged 27 after a year in detention, and in February her remains were finally repatriated to Ukraine. She was one of 757 Ukrainian military casualties handed over by Russia, and each of the other bodies came with a name, number, location, and sometimes a cause of death – but according to their paperwork, she was an 'unidentified man'. It took weeks for officials to confirm those unidentified remains were in fact Viktoria Roshchyna – and some of her body parts were missing, including her brain, eyes, and larynx. Her head had also been shaved. Preliminary forensic investigation found 'numerous signs of torture' including burn marks on her feet from electric shocks, abrasions on the hips and head, and a broken rib. Sources close to the official investigation told The Guardian that Viktoria's hyoid bone in her neck was broken – the sort of damage which can occur during strangulation. But due to her missing body parts, the exact cause of her death may never be known. Viktoria's death was first confirmed when her father Volodymyr Roshchyn received a letter from the Russian authorities. He remained hopeful that his daughter was still alive until her body was finally identified through DNA testing. She was held without any access to communication with the outside world – a serious human rights violation according to international law – and a war crimes investigation into her death has been opened. According to an initial report, Viktoria was held in a temporary detention centre in Melitopol, and according to a cellmate who was later released from the prison, she was tortured with knives and electric shocks. Towards the end of 2023 she was transferred to another prison, known as Sizo 2, but her condition deteriorated here. Other prisoners were water-boarded, beaten, shocked in an electric chair, and given very small rations of food. Viktoria stopped eating, her weight dropping to 30kg (less than 5st), and she struggled to move without help. In April 2024 her family received a letter from the Russian defence ministry saying she 'has been detained and is currently in the territory of the Russian Federation'. It gave no other details. Colleagues at Ukrainian Pravda, where she worked, started pulling string to try and get her released – and a message was even passed to Pope Francis at the Vatican, who agreed to ask for her name to be added to the prisoner exchange list. Viktoria was told she was due to be released – but when the prisoner exchange date arrived on September 13 of last year, she was missing. Weeks later, the deputy head of Russia's military police wrote to her father to say she had died on September 19. Volodymyr refused to believe his daughter was dead and wrote several letters demanding information. Sizo 2 director Aleksandr Shtoda has replied twice claiming she was never there, saying in January she 'is not and was not listed in the databases'. Viktoria bravely went to the Russian-occupied territories to try and uncover the alleged abduction and torture of Ukrainian citizens. More Trending Ukraine believes as many as 16,000 of its civilians could be held in more than 180 Russian detention camps without charge. The UN has described Russia's treatment of detainees as 'disturbing and the scale is extreme'. Alice Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, told the Washington Post: 'I have documented serious cases of torture, including mock executions, all types of beatings, electricity being applied to ears and genitals and other parts of the body, waterboarding, as well as threats and actual rapes and sexual violence.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Putin announces ceasefire on 80th anniversary of VE Day MORE: CIA official's son killed fighting for Putin took childhood rebellion to extreme MORE: What happened to the third chair at Trump and Zelensky's Vatican meeting?
Daily Mirror
29-04-2025
- Daily Mirror
Russia returns body of female Ukrainian reporter with eyes and brain MISSING
Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was taken as a prisoner of war after heading inside occupied areas of Ukraine to report on the invasion - her mutilated remains have now been returned The body of a Ukrainian journalist detained by Russia earlier in the war was finally returned, but with her eye and brain missing after suffering horrific torture at the hands of the Kremlin. Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was taken as a prisoner of war in 2023 after heading inside Ukraine 's occupied territories on a reporting mission. She vanished into Russia 's hellish penal system and her severely emaciated body has now been finally returned to Ukraine. The body bag she was sent home in marked the corpse as an "unidentified male' before DNA tests finally proved the remains - missing her eye, part of her larynx and brain - were Viktoria. Investigators believe the organs were removed in an attempt by the Russians to hide the torture she suffered at their hands. They also found burn marks on her feet, likely traces of electric shock, and a broken rib. An expert told news outlet Important Stories: 'The larynx can be important evidence in cases of strangulation. When a person is strangled, the hyoid bone [in the neck] is often broken. Haemorrhages can be found in the whites of the eyes, and oxygen deprivation can be detected in the brain.' Former POWs held with Roshchyna - who worked for digital media Hromadske TV and other outlets - said she was detained in Energodar in the summer of 2023. She was later transported to Melitopol, where she was held captive for four months and subjected to torture. From here, she went to Taganrog's SIZO-2 - likened to a concentration camp - in a critical condition. She had fevers, her menstruation stopped, and she suffered from abdominal pain. Yet she is reported to have defied her captors, telling guards: 'You are occupiers, you came to our country, you kill our people... I will never cooperate with you.' A former inmate said: 'Even the word 'concentration camp' would be too mild for SIZO-2.' The prison earned a reputation early in the occupation for torture, with beatings a daily happening. Inmates were made to admit war crimes during torture sessions and were denied access to lawyers or human rights activists. Among the inmates are soldiers who refused to take part in notorious Russian 'meat-grinder' assaults on the frontline. Others are held because they had tried to escape, or for other supposed transgressions. Horrific acts of torture have been reported from prisoner of war camps in Russia where captured Ukrainian soldiers are fed dog food and suffer sickening cruelty. Inmate Oleksiy Kretsu revealed he had witnessed the torture of two prisoners whose genitals were stunned. He said: 'There were women in their bathhouse. And they loved to beat us in the genitals with boots, stun guns, anything. They also beat us during interrogations. 'I'm just a simple border guard, not an assault trooper, not a marine, not a machine gunner. I lost half of my teeth during these interrogations.'
