Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna fell into Russian captivity in August 2023 while traveling to Russian-occupied territories to report on the ground.
For over a year, her family and loved ones awaited her exchange and return home. But in October 2024, her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, received word from Russian authorities that Viktoria had died in captivity. Throughout that time, she was held in various prisons, spending her final months in SIZO remand prison No. 2 in Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, Russia.
Journalists from the Slidstvo.Info agency, alongside Reporters Without Borders and colleagues from public broadcaster Suspilne and Graty outlet, traced the path of the 27-year-old Viktoria, uncovering the conditions of her detention in Russian prisons and gathering testimonies from those who saw and spoke with her.
This is detailed in Slidstvo.Info’s investigation. The video has English subtitles.
VIKA DISAPPEARS
According to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Viktoria Roshchyna was slated for a prisoner exchange on September 13 or 14, but she did not return. In early October 2024, Viktoria’s father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, received a letter, purportedly from Russia’s Defense Ministry, stating that his daughter had died in captivity. The brief message listed her death date as September 19, 2024, and noted that her body would be returned “to the Ukrainian side as part of an exchange of detained persons’ bodies.” No circumstances or cause of death were provided. Months after that notice, her body has not been handed over to her family.
Viktoria Roshchyna / Photo from the journalist’s Facebook page
Back in March 2022, Roshchyna had already been captured by Russians once before. She was held for 10 days in occupied Berdyansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Despite that, Viktoria did not stop traveling to occupied territories, believing she could not cover events without seeing them firsthand.
“When we talked about it, she would just say it was crucial for her to keep going—to keep telling those stories from occupied areas. She saw it as her mission. She would say she was the only one who could do it,” recalls Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, from one of her early conversations with Viktoria.
Viktoria began working with Ukrainska Pravda after her first captivity. At that point, hromadske had ended their collaboration with her to discourage further trips to occupied areas. She became a freelancer and started publishing with Ukrainska Pravda.
In the summer of 2023, Viktoria set out on her next assignment to occupied territory. She did not inform her editors of her plans, so no one knew where she was headed.
“You couldn’t stop her,” Sevgil recalls.
A few days later, Sevgil received a message from Viktoria’s father saying she had gone missing and was out of touch. Alongside human rights advocate Lyudmyla Yankina, Sevgil filed a report with the Prosecutor General’s Office to open a case on her disappearance.
For a while, no one could get answers about the journalist’s whereabouts.
“We wrote everywhere. We reached out to international human rights organizations, Warren Buffett (the American philanthropist—ed.) was even ready to offer money to buy her freedom if we could find out where she was. We asked Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov to dig for info from occupied territories. We appealed to Ukraine’s Security Service leadership. There were even letters to the Pope to help secure Viktoria’s release and that of other civilian hostages,” Sevgil Musaieva says.
According to Iryna Didenko, a senior prosecutor in the Roshchyna case at the Prosecutor General’s Office, the first intelligence came from operational sources.
“When we found out she was being held in what they call the ‘garages’ in Melitopol, it immediately became clear that things were much worse than we could have hoped. This was detention, and Russia had already gotten its hands on her, so to speak,” says Iryna Didenko.
Soon after, Viktoria’s father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, received an official letter confirming she was indeed in captivity. But it offered no specifics on her location.
Then, in late August 2024, Ukraine negotiated with Russia for a call between Viktoria and her father.
“At that point, both Viktoria and her parents confirmed to each other that talks of an exchange were underway. But no one could say when it would happen—neither Viktoria nor her parents knew the date or time,” says Yevheniya Kapalkina, her father’s lawyer.
In September 2024, Sevgil learned from sources that Viktoria might return in an upcoming exchange—September 13 or 14. But Russia did not release her then.
A month later, her father received a letter from Russia’s Defense Ministry stating that Viktoria had died. It said her body would be transferred to Ukraine as part of an “exchange of detained persons’ bodies.”
Letter to Volodymyr Roshchyn from Russia’s Defense Ministry stating that Viktoria Roshchyna had died
As of this investigation’s publication, neither Viktoria’s body nor any further word from Russia about her fate has been received.
VIKA’S PATH
Pinpointing Viktoria’s locations in occupied territory was tough. She had not told anyone where she was going.
But prosecutors learned she had traveled to occupied areas via Europe and Russia.
“It was a bit easier for us to track her route because she chose to go through Western countries. She traveled through Poland and Latvia. We are in touch with partners there who assist in all our war crime investigations. They helped establish that on July 25, 2023, she crossed into Poland by bus, and by July 26, 2023, she crossed from Latvia into Russia on foot,” Iryna Didenko says.
Slidstvo.Info journalists discovered, through foreign sources, that the Russian checkpoint Viktoria crossed was called “Ludonka.” From there, several routes lead to occupied territory, all via Russia.
After extensive searching, Slidstvo.Info found several witnesses in occupied areas who had spoken with Viktoria during her assignment. They shed light on her path.
“She reached out first, and we started talking. Later, she called me asking how to get into occupied territory. There are two routes—one through Crimea, and the other through Mariupol. She was gathering info on the fastest, safest way to get there. There aren’t really any safe routes, but it seems she decided to go via Mariupol. I know for sure she wanted to find housing in Melitopol, Berdyansk, Enerhodar, and she was also interested in Vasylivka,” says witness Andriy (name changed for safety reasons—ed.).
Another witness from occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, who asked to remain anonymous due to risks to her family there, confirmed this. She said Viktoria followed this route: Enerhodar—Vodiane—Kamyanka—Enerhodar. These towns surround Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which Russia occupied early in the full-scale war.
The route Viktoria Roshchyna traveled
Witness Andriy says Victoria planned to investigate torture chambers at the ZNPP.
“She was interested in how captured ZNPP workers were treated, and what was done to them. She also asked where people might disappear. She wanted contacts in Enerhodar where there are torture chambers. Through acquaintances, we helped her learn there were two—one for ‘atomic workers’ (ZNPP staff—ed.), another for everyone else,” Andriy says.
Viktoria last made contact from Enerhodar; then communication cut off. It later emerged she had been nabbed and held in torture chambers in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast. From there, she was taken to Taganrog.
“Without any charges. I want to stress that—without any charges. She couldn’t even defend herself, no matter how much she might have wanted to,” Iryna Didenko says.
Slidstvo.Info journalists obtained rare testimony from Viktoria’s cellmate about what happened to her in the torture chambers and how Russians treated her in Taganrog’s SIZO remand prison No. 2.
“She said right away she was a journalist. For the first few days, they held her in Enerhodar in a place that looked like a police station,” her former cellmate recounts.
Witnesses collectively pointed to one police station in Enerhodar where Russians held civilians during the period Viktoria was captured—located at 17 Budivelnykiv Prospekt, in the city’s northern part near the road to ZNPP. She may have been detained there.
Then Roshchyna was moved to Melitopol, where she was tortured.
“That regime was incredibly harsh and brutal for her. She struggled greatly during the first few days. You could see it in her—she constantly demanded to speak to the investigator, the staff, the management. She wanted to make it clear that there was no case against her. She wanted to reach out to them in any way she could, to find out why she had been brought there specifically,” the witness recalls.
TORTURE
The witness from Taganrog’s SIZO remand prison No. 2 said Viktoria was tortured. Her body bore numerous knife wounds from her time in occupied territory.
“Whenever there were interrogations, the Russians used electric current. I saw several scars on her body—definitely on her arm and leg. She had a knife wound, a fresh scar, between her wrist and elbow in the soft tissue. The scar was about three centimeters long,” the cellmate from Taganrog recounts, relaying Viktoria’s words.
Beyond knife cuts, Viktoria was also tortured with electricity.
“I know they used current (to torture her—ed.) more than once. She didn’t say how many times, but she said she was all blue,” Vika’s captive cellmate recalls, specifying that the current might have been applied to Viktoria’s ears.
They would not let her take the medication she had—sedatives and painkillers.
Over time, the journalist began losing weight drastically. Viktoria refused food and constantly sought help from her jailers.
“No detention facility anywhere in the world is designed to let people die. It has a completely different purpose. Everyone who comes back (from Russia—ed.) has lost massive amounts of weight. She (Vika—ed.) was in an even worse state. She was a young, slim girl to begin with. So one of the investigation’s theories is that it could have been the inhumane conditions of her detention,” Iryna Didenko explains.
When remand prison staff noticed Viktoria wasting away, the facility’s head visited her cell and spoke with her. She kept insisting they release, exchange, or deport her.
“She constantly asked for help. At first, she said she had stomach issues, no periods the whole time, and was feverish. Then the fellow women noticed she was losing weight fast. Vika weighed down to 30 kilograms. I helped her stand because she was in such a state she couldn’t even lift her head from the pillow. I would lift her head first, she would grab the bed frame, and only then could she get up,” her cellmate says.
According to the witness, during their detention, a Russian commissioner conducted an inspection. They hid Viktoria from the check and moved her to another floor in a locked room.
Eventually, they put the journalist in a hospital, where she stayed for a few weeks. Afterward, she was returned to the remand prison but placed in a separate neighboring cell.
Witnesses say she was moving on her own by then and answering jailers’ questions. One mocked her.
“I really did not like one guard’s reaction. I got the sense he decided to taunt her. He said, ‘Look at her, she’s even fattened up her cheeks,’” the witness recounts.
The last time Vika was seen was September 8, 2024, when she was led from her cell in an unknown direction.
On October 13, Volodymyr Roshchyn received a letter from Russia’s Defense Ministry saying Viktoria had died and her body would be returned home as part of a body exchange. Five months have passed—no body, no mention of Viktoria has come since.
