Ukrainian Journalist Viktoria Roshchyna Dies in Russian Detention After Torture

Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshina, who died in Russian captivity. Facebook/Victoria Roshina

Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roschina died on September 19, 2024, while being held at SIZO No. 3 in the city of Kizel in Perm Krai, Russia. She had been illegally detained in various Russian facilities for more than a year before fatal consequences occurred. Investigators working on the case collected and confirmed these details.

Roschina was captured in August 2023 while she was reporting from the occupied territories. The journalist’s family had long awaited her exchange, believing that her fate could be decided through exchange agreements. In October 2024, her father learned of his daughter’s death.

According to investigators, eight days before her death she was moved from the Taganrog pre-trial detention facility to SIZO No. 3 in Kizel, where Roschina died. Testimony from a former serviceman confirms that the journalist endured harsh conditions: exhaustion, signs of torture, forced listening to Russian propaganda, and severe “processing” procedures.

“An hour or two they beat me continuously. They gave me a minute to catch my breath and started beating again. During the ‘processing’ I fainted twice. The women were shaved bald, and you could hear them crying”

Another woman who was also held captive said that on Roschina’s body there were knife wounds and signs of electric shocks. The distance between Taganrog and Kizel was about 2,500 kilometers; the transfer lasted three days.

Further materials revealed that from closed Russian bases journalists obtained a death certificate issued by the Leninsky Department of the Perm City Administration dated September 19, 2024. This was confirmed by the Office of the Prosecutor General. The body was handed over to Ukraine in a state that prevented a full forensic examination.

Journalists also found a possible link between the death and the leadership of SIZO No. 3 in Kizel. In September 2024, the duties of the head were performed by 39-year-old Vitaliy Spirin, and since November 40-year-old Vyacheslav Perevozkin has headed the institution, as of now. Also mentioned were other high-ranking officers of the security and inmate-education service. All of them, according to investigators, continue to work at the SIZO in Kizel.

Who is Viktoria Roschina

Viktoria Roschina has worked as a frontline journalist since the very beginning of the full-scale war. On March 16, 2022, news emerged of her first detention by Russian security services in the occupied Berdyansk; she was held in captivity, after which on March 22 the same security structures released her on condition that she record a video address to Russian authorities.

According to international human rights organizations, Viktoria disappeared on August 3, 2023, in the occupied territory where she was reporting. According to her father, on July 27 she left Ukraine toward Poland and was to reach the occupied territories in the east via Russia within three days. In a conversation on August 3, the journalist said she had undergone several days of checks at the border, but did not specify her exact location. At first, the family filed a missing-person report on August 12, and on September 21 they also filed reports to the SBU, the Ministry for Reintegration, and the Office of the Ombudsman.

According to her father, the Ukrainian Security Service confirmed that Viktoria was taken prisoner by Russia, and officials note that there are many “frozen” Ukrainian detainees in Russian prisons, among whom she might be.

Official information about the death appeared on October 10, 2024. A representative of one of the intelligence services said that Roschina was on exchange lists and was to return home soon. On October 11, the Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed that the journalist’s disappearance is being investigated as a war crime combined with intentional murder.