Latest news with #ViktoriaRoshchyna
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
'My duty': Young Ukrainian women reporting from the front
When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Olha Kyrylenko was at home watching images from her colleagues risking their lives to cover the siege of the port city of Mariupol. "I asked myself whether I could work in such conditions at all," said Kyrylenko, now a 26-year-old reporter for the leading media outlet Ukrainska Pravda. "And I was like, well, I have to at least try," she told AFP during a rare break in war-torn eastern Ukraine. She went to cover the front lines for the first time shortly after Russia invaded, and noticed that she was far from the only woman. "All my friends, journalists working in the war, are women," Kyrylenko said. While women journalists had already been covering fighting between Ukraine and Kremlin-backed separatists since 2014, a new generation emerged in 2022. - 'Truth of this war' - Mobilisation in Ukraine's army is obligatory only for men, but the country has seen more and more women joining its ranks. Two Ukrainska Pravda journalists have been drafted into the army, including the photographer Kyrylenko worked with on her first reporting trip to the front in 2022. Since then, she has been working on her own. That was also the case for Viktoria Roshchyna, whose death in Russian detention last year highlighted the risks taken by Ukrainian journalists covering the war. The 27-year-old went missing in 2023 during a high-risk trip to territory occupied by Russian forces. Her body was sent back only in February and bearing signs of torture, according to a media investigation. Kyrylenko worked with Roshchyna and remembers her as "tenacious" and ready to work where no one else would. But Kyrylenko said her death had forced her to think hard about whether journalism "is worth risking your life". In April, Kyrylenko was reporting in Pokrovsk, a vital front-line logistics hub where fighting is fierce, on her mother's birthday. She promised her mother that nothing would happen to her. But, she said, "my life right now is not the highest value in my life". The main thing is "that my country as a country should survive and that the truth about this war, whatever it is, should be present in the information space". - 'A woman in this war' - Keeping a professional distance as a Ukrainian journalist covering the war can be difficult. Alina Yevych, a 25-year-old reporter, said she had managed -- for a while. Then she met a woman who said she had been kidnapped and raped for a week by Russian soldiers in Mariupol. After hearing her words, "I don't know how to be objective", said Yevych, who works along with her boss Maria Davydenko for Vchasno, an independent news outlet. Yevych said soldiers they interview sometimes found it hard to believe that women could understand how tanks work or listen to their stories without flinching. Mentalities are changing, Yevych said, but "for some people, you really remain a girl in this war". - 'Play Rambo' - Vyacheslav Maryshev, editor in chief of the visuals department at Suspilne, a state-funded news organisation, in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, said his female employees tended to take less unnecessary risks. The men sometimes want to act like "Rambo" to prove their bravery, he said, but in his team of war reporters there are more women than men. One of them, Oleksandra Novosel, said she had just convinced her bosses to invest in bulletproof jackets more suited to women's body shapes. At the start of the invasion, one of the vests available at Suspilne weighed 12 kilogrammes (26 pounds) -- around a quarter of her weight. "I walked around in it and wobbled," Novosel recalled. The 30-year-old said she would prefer not to need a bulletproof vest, and had not imagined working in a war zone until her country became one. She would rather be covering courts or investigating corruption, she said, but for the moment, reporting on the war is "my duty". led-dt/jbr/djt/js
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Moscow returns body of Ukrainian journalist killed in Russian captivity bearing signs of significant torture
The body of Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was one of 757 bodies of mostly Ukrainian soldiers returned to Kyiv on Feb. 14, 2025, and reportedly bore unmistakable signs of torture after more than a year in Russian captivity. Roshchyna, who was described as a determined journalist, was captured by Russian forces while reporting behind the front lines in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine in August 2023. While her body was returned with hundreds of others, she was reportedly one of the few whose name was not provided, instead a tag attached to her shin read "unidentified male." Russian Attacks On Ukraine Intensify In Make-or-break Week For Peace Talks According to a report by the Washington Post, her head had been shaved, burn marks were evident on her feet, a rib was found to have been broken, and there were possible traces of electric shock. An investigation into her detention and death confirmed that some of her organs were missing in what some reports suggested was a move to conceal the extent of her torture, including her brain, eyes and part of the trachea. Read On The Fox News App Yurii Bielousov, head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office war crimes department, which led the investigation into her death, told Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda that there were signs she had also been strangled. Russia did not confirm until April 2024 that it had detained the journalist, and in October 2024 it sent a letter to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyna, telling him she had died in captivity. Her body was marked by Russian officials with an abbreviation "SPAS," which reportedly means "total failure of the arteries of the heart," a designation that Russian authorities may have used to fabricate an official cause of death. Trump Marks 100-Days In Office Embroiled In Trade Battles, Deadly Wars And Hard-pressed Deals "The condition of the body and its mummification have made it impossible to establish the cause of death through the forensic examination," Bielousov told reporters involved in the investigation. Roshchyna's parents have requested additional testing to be carried out. After her capture, Roshchyna was held at a police station in the city of Energodar near the Zaporizhzhi nuclear power plant, where, according to the investigation, Russian forces set up a "torture chamber" and subjected captives to severe beatings and electric shock. It is believed Roshchyna endured electric shock applied to her ears. Roshchyna was then transferred to Melitopol days later where she was held until the end of 2023 and is also believed to have endured significant torture. By the beginning of 2024, she was reportedly transferred along with other prisoners to a pre-trial detention center known as "No. 2" in Taganrog, a city in southwest Russia near the Ukrainian border and which has been likened to a concentration camp. The investigation referred to the site "as one of the most terrifying for Ukrainian prisoners" and confirmed that neither lawyers nor international organizations such as the Red Cross or United Nations observers have been allowed into this detention center. Roshchyna reportedly went on a hunger strike before she was transferred to a hospital, revived to an extent and then sent back to the detention center. She was intended to be returned to Ukraine in September 2024, but the exchange never happened for unknown reasons. Roshchyna was then reported to have died while in a convoy, but where she was headed remains article source: Moscow returns body of Ukrainian journalist killed in Russian captivity bearing signs of significant torture
Fox News
30-04-2025
- Fox News
Moscow returns body of Ukrainian journalist killed in Russian captivity bearing signs of significant torture
The body of Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was one of 757 bodies of mostly Ukrainian soldiers returned to Kyiv on Feb. 14, 2025, and reportedly bore unmistakable signs of torture after more than a year in Russian captivity. Roshchyna, who was described as a determined journalist, was captured by Russian forces while reporting behind the front lines in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine in August 2023. While her body was returned with hundreds of others, she was reportedly one of the few whose name was not provided, instead a tag attached to her shin read "unidentified male." According to a report by the Washington Post, her head had been shaved, burn marks were evident on her feet, a rib was found to have been broken, and there were possible traces of electric shock. An investigation into her detention and death confirmed that some of her organs were missing in what some reports suggested was a move to conceal the extent of her torture, including her brain, eyes and part of the trachea. Yurii Bielousov, head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office war crimes department, which led the investigation into her death, told Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda that there were signs she had also been strangled. Russia did not confirm until April 2024 that it had detained the journalist, and in October 2024 it sent a letter to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyna, telling him she had died in captivity. Her body was marked by Russian officials with an abbreviation "SPAS," which reportedly means "total failure of the arteries of the heart," a designation that Russian authorities may have used to fabricate an official cause of death. "The condition of the body and its mummification have made it impossible to establish the cause of death through the forensic examination," Bielousov told reporters involved in the investigation. Roshchyna's parents have requested additional testing to be carried out. After her capture, Roshchyna was held at a police station in the city of Energodar near the Zaporizhzhi nuclear power plant, where, according to the investigation, Russian forces set up a "torture chamber" and subjected captives to severe beatings and electric shock. It is believed Roshchyna endured electric shock applied to her ears. Roshchyna was then transferred to Melitopol days later where she was held until the end of 2023 and is also believed to have endured significant torture. By the beginning of 2024, she was reportedly transferred along with other prisoners to a pre-trial detention center known as "No. 2" in Taganrog, a city in southwest Russia near the Ukrainian border and which has been likened to a concentration camp. The investigation referred to the site "as one of the most terrifying for Ukrainian prisoners" and confirmed that neither lawyers nor international organizations such as the Red Cross or United Nations observers have been allowed into this detention center. Roshchyna reportedly went on a hunger strike before she was transferred to a hospital, revived to an extent and then sent back to the detention center. She was intended to be returned to Ukraine in September 2024, but the exchange never happened for unknown reasons. Roshchyna was then reported to have died while in a convoy, but where she was headed remains unclear.
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."
Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Russia returns mutilated body of top Ukrainian reporter, 27, with her eyes and brain missing after torture in Putin's brutal jails
Russia gave back the body of a detained award-winning Ukrainian female journalist with her eyeballs, brain and part of her larynx missing, it has been revealed. Prisoner of war Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was held in occupied Ukraine and tortured by Vladimir Putin 's brutal regime. The body bag she was sent home in marked the corpse as an 'unidentified male'. DNA testing confirmed the emaciated body - with her head shaved and a neck bone broken - was Roshchyna. There were 'numerous signs of torture and cruel treatment', said on the body, said representative of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, Yuriy Bielousov. Ukrainian investigators found burn marks on her feet, likely traces of electric shock, and a broken rib, reported independent news outlet Important Stories. She had vanished into Putin's penal hell in 2023 on a reporting mission inside Ukraine's occupied territories. Her internal organs were likely missing in a crude attempt to hide the torture which is routine in the Russian system. 'The larynx can be important evidence in cases of strangulation,' an expert told the news outlet. '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 and three days 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 still 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.'
