Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna dies in Russian detention, Kyiv says

Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who went missing in an occupied part of her country, died in Russian detention last month, Ukrainian authorities said earlier this week.

Roshchyna, who was 27, disappeared in August last year during a reporting trip to a Russian-occupied area in Ukraine. She was missing for months, with her loved ones having no idea what happened to her.

According to the Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Moscow only informed Roshchyna’s family she was detained in Russia in April, months after she was captured. 

“I have official documentation from the Russian side confirming the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who was illegally deprived of her liberty by Russia,” Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said in a statement.

CNN has asked Russian authorities for comment, but received no answer.

Roshchyna’s colleagues said she travelled to the Russian-held territory – a dangerous ordeal for any Ukrainian – to report on the lives of people living under occupation. They said they believed the young journalist was killed by Russian authorities.

“We have every reason to believe that her death was either the result of a deliberate murder or the result of the cruel treatment and violence to which she was subjected during her time in Russian captivity,” Ukrainian journalists and media professionals said in a statement published in several Ukrainian media outlets.

The statement added that Roshchyna was healthy before her yearlong imprisonment.

The Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General said it was investigating her death as a war crime combined with premeditated murder.

Journalist Evgeniya Motorevskaya, who worked with Roshchyna as the former editor of Hromadske, a Ukrainian media outlet, said the young reporter was determined to do her job as best as she could.

“For her, there was nothing more important than journalism. Vika was always where the most important events for the country took place. And she would have continued to do this for many years, but the Russians killed her,” she said in a statement published on Hromadske’s website, referring to Roshchyna by her diminutive.

Petro Yatsenko, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said in a statement that some 25 Ukrainian journalists were being held in Russian captivity, and several others are considered missing.

The Ukrainian government says thousands of Ukrainians have been held in arbitrary detention in Russia. Lubinets, Kyiv’s human rights commissioner, said in July that 14,000 Ukrainian civilians were in Russian captivity, some of whom have been held since 2014 when the war broke out in eastern Ukraine and Russia annexed Crimea.

Yatsenko said that according to Russian authorities, Roshchyna died while being transferred from a detention facility in the southern Russian city of Taganrog to Moscow. He said the transfer was in preparation for her release as part of a prisoner exchange.

“Unfortunately, we did not have enough time,” he said in the statement.

Tetyana Katrychenko from the Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian rights group, said the detention facility in Taganrog was known for its cruel treatment of detainees, according to a statement published on her social media.

CNN has previously reported on the widespread torture of Ukrainian prisoners by Russian authorities.

“Taganrog … is known as one of the most brutal places of detention for Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. It is called hell on earth,” Katrychenko said, adding that Roshchyna was held in Taganrog from at least May to September 2024. “She was held in solitary confinement,” she added.

Roshchyna was awarded the 2022 Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. Her work appeared in a number of media outlets including Ukrayinska Pravda, Hromadske and Radio Free Europe.