Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was tortured during the time she spent in Russian detention, and several of her organs, including her brain, were removed before her body was returned, according to a joint media investigation.
Roshchyna was captured in August 2023 while reporting from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region in eastern Ukraine. The last journalist willing to risk crossing the frontline, Roshchyna, at the time, was working to expose Russia’s brutal detention system, including the illegal captivity and torture of Ukrainians, according to the joint media report published by the nonprofit media organization Forbidden Stories and 12 news outlets.
For more than a year, the journalist was held without charge or legal representation, and Russia’s Defense Ministry only confirmed her arrest in a letter to her parents in April 2024.
In October, Ukraine’s Prisoners of War Coordination Headquarters announced Roshchyna’s death, citing a message from Russia’s Defense Ministry to her father. It said she died on Sept. 19. at the age of 27.
Her body, tagged with the number 757, was returned in late February with documents mislabeling her as an “unidentified male,” who suffered “extensive damage to the coronary arteries.” A forensic examination of the remains later revealed that they were actually that of a woman, and DNA testing identified them as Roshchyna’s with 99 percent certainty, according to the joint media report.
Her father said he does not believe the body belongs to his daughter, despite the high DNA match, and he has request of additional testing.
Roshchyna reportedly endured four months of torture at a black site in occupied Melitopol before being transferred to a pre-trial detention center in the Russian city of Taganrog in December 2023. The facility there has been described as “hell on Earth” for captive Ukrainians.
According to the report, her body showed “numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment,” including “abrasions and hemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on her feet,” according to Yuriy Belousov, head of the War Crimes Unit at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office.
Belousov also noted there were signs that an autopsy had been performed before the body was returned to Ukraine. He said her missing organs — including her eyes and larynx in addition to the brain — could suggest a Russian effort to hide her cause of death, and possibly to conceal that it had committed a war crime.
The hyoid bone in her neck was also reportedly broken, which can occur during strangulation. Given the state of her remains however, Roshchyna’s cause of death may never be known.
