Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have opened an investigation for premeditated murder and the violation of laws and customs of war, over the death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna in Russian captivity, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Friday.
Roshchyna, who was 27 at the time of her death, worked as a freelance journalist for independent news outlets including Ukrainska Pravda, Hromadske, and Radio Free Europe. She was detained by Russian forces in August 2023 while reporting from Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defence Ministry confirmed in a letter to her father sent in April.
Roshchyna’s father received a notice from the Russian Defence Ministry, dated 2 October, on Thursday, which said she had died on 19 September and that her body would be returned to Ukraine, Ukrainian news outlet Graty reported.
According to Tetyana Katrychenko, head of the Ukrainian human rights organisation, Media Initiative for Human Rights, Roshchyna was held in solitary confinement at a pretrial detention centre in Taganrog, southern Russia, from May to September. Katrychenko said that the Taganrog detention centre was “one of the most cruel” places of detention for Ukrainian prisoners in Russia.
“They call it hell on earth,” Katrychenko said, adding that members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion and those who defended Mariupol’s Azovstal plant during the early days of the war were held there. “Those who were released report terrible torture,” Katrychenko added, noting that prison guards had forced prisoners to confess to crimes, after which they would transfer them to Rostov-on-Don for trial.
Roshchyna was reportedly taken from Taganrog and transported to an unknown location ahead of a prisoner exchange she had been due to take part in on 13 September.
In a statement on Friday, the European External Action Service said the EU was “appalled” by Roshchyna’s death and demanded “a thorough and independent investigation” into the circumstances surrounding it.