04/30/2025April 30, 2025
Signs of torture reveal dead Ukrainian journalist’s ordeal in Russian captivity
Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna was tortured before her death in Russian captivity, said the report by media outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Ukrainska Pravda and iStories, citing Ukrainian prosecutors.
In February, Russia returned Roshchyna’s emaciated body. Her organs had apparently been removed in what may have been an attempt to cover up the cause of her death.
The forensic examination “revealed numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment”, the prosecutors were quoted as saying.
These included “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.
The eyeballs, brain and part of her larynx were missing. Ukrainian authorities suspect that Roshchyna was strangled.
Roshchyna had traveled from Kyiv to Russia via Poland and the Baltic states in July 2023, and from there to the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. According to the journalists’ research, she was detained there at the end of August.
She was scheduled to be released in September 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange, but was taken off the list at the last moment. A month later, Russian prison authorities informed her relatives that Roshchyna had died.
Her body was released in February as the remains of an allegedly unknown man. Identification was only possible through DNA testing.
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