27-year-old Viktoria Rostchyna: Ukrainian journalist died in Russian custody

27-year-old Viktoria Rostchyna
Ukrainian journalist dies in Russian custody

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There is hardly any independent information from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. The young journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna reports from there until she is arrested. Now she has died in Russian custody.

A young Ukrainian journalist died in Russian custody. As the British BBC reports, Viktoriia Roshchyna’s family was informed by Russian authorities last week that the 27-year-old had died.

Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023 in a part of Ukraine now occupied by Russia. It was only nine months later that Moscow officially confirmed that the reporter had been arrested.

According to the report, Roshchyna’s father received a letter from the Russian Defense Ministry indicating the date of death as September 19. According to information, the young woman’s body will be handed over along with the remains of killed soldiers in an exchange organized by Ukraine and Russia.

At the weekend, friends of the journalist gathered for a spontaneous memorial event in Kyiv. Sevgil Musaieva, the editor-in-chief of Ukrayinska Pravda, called Roshchyna “absolutely great.” The reporter traveled to the “occupied territories” to provide information about “what life is like in these cities under siege by the Russian army.”

Roshchyna wrote freelance for various Ukrainian media and the US-funded “Radio Liberty”, among other things, about life in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and about the separatist-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine. It also documented the nearly three-month defense of the port of Mariupol after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Detention in Taganrog

According to Roshchyna’s father, the journalist traveled to occupied Ukraine via Poland and Russia in July 2023. She has been held in prison camp No. 2 in Taganrog, southern Russia, since May 2024. The facility is notorious for the brutal treatment of many Ukrainians. According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian citizen saw the journalist there on September 8th or 9th.

At that point, they assumed that Roshchyna would be released on September 13 during one of the regular prisoner of war exchanges between Ukraine and Russia. But then the 27-year-old was transferred along with another woman and neither of them was replaced.

Tetyana Katrychenko from the Media Initiative for Human Rights suspects that she was taken to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, which is run by the FSB security service. The Ukrainian secret service has now confirmed the journalist’s death. The Attorney General’s Office is now investigating murder instead of illegal detention.

Jeanne Cavalier, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said Russian authorities “never released information about her detention, despite repeated requests from her family, Ukrainian authorities and RSF.” According to the organization, Roshchyna is the 13th journalist to die on the job since the Russian invasion.

Since the beginning of Russia’s large-scale invasion, numerous civilians have been abducted from the areas of Ukraine captured by Moscow. Neither lawyers nor the Red Cross have access to them.

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