Ukrainian journalist extensively tortured by Russian forces before dying in captivity

Warning: This article contains graphic and disturbing accounts from Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The body of Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, was one of 757 bodies of mostly Ukrainian soldiers returned to Kyiv on Feb. 14, 2025, and reportedly bore unmistakable signs of torture after more than a year in Russian captivity. 

Roshchyna, who was described as a determined journalist, was captured by Russian forces while reporting behind the front lines in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine in August 2023.

While her body was returned with hundreds of others, she was reportedly one of the few whose name was not provided, instead a tag attached to her shin read “unidentified male.”

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According to a report by the Washington Post, her head had been shaved, burn marks were evident on her feet, a rib was found to have been broken, and there were possible traces of electric shock. 

An investigation into her detention and death confirmed that some of her organs were missing in what some reports suggested was a move to conceal the extent of her torture, including her brain, eyes and part of the trachea.

Yurii Bielousov, head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office war crimes department, which led the investigation into her death, told Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda that there were signs she had also been strangled.

Russia did not confirm until April 2024 that it had detained the journalist, and in October 2024 it sent a letter to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyna, telling him she had died in captivity.

Her body was marked by Russian officials with an abbreviation “SPAS,” which reportedly means “total failure of the arteries of the heart,” a designation that Russian authorities may have used to fabricate an official cause of death.

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“The condition of the body and its mummification have made it impossible to establish the cause of death through the forensic examination,” Bielousov told reporters involved in the investigation.

Roshchyna’s parents have requested additional testing to be carried out.

After her capture, Roshchyna was held at a police station in the city of Energodar near the Zaporizhzhi nuclear power plant, where, according to the investigation, Russian forces set up a “torture chamber” and subjected captives to severe beatings and electric shock.

It is believed Roshchyna endured electric shock applied to her ears. 

Roshchyna was then transferred to Melitopol days later where she was held until the end of 2023 and is also believed to have endured significant torture. 

By the beginning of 2024, she was reportedly transferred along with other prisoners to a pre-trial detention center known as “No. 2” in Taganrog, a city in southwest Russia near the Ukrainian border and which has been likened to a concentration camp. 

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The investigation referred to the site “as one of the most terrifying for Ukrainian prisoners” and confirmed that neither lawyers nor international organizations such as the Red Cross or United Nations observers have been allowed into this detention center.

Roshchyna reportedly went on a hunger strike before she was transferred to a hospital, revived to an extent and then sent back to the detention center.

She was intended to be returned to Ukraine in September 2024, but the exchange never happened for unknown reasons. Roshchyna was then reported to have died while in a convoy, but where she was headed remains unclear.