Victoria Roshchyna tortured and killed in Russian prison
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The Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna turned 27. She reported, among other things, from the battles for Mariupol. She is taken prisoner in the summer of 2023 in Zaporizhzhia. Her family heard nothing from her for over a year. In August 2024, she was allowed to call her family from Russian custody. She was able to tell them that she would soon be released in a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. She didn’t show up. It wasn’t until October, several weeks after her death, that the family received a three-line note. It said that Victoria was dead.
Victoria Roshchyna tortured
She was found in an exchange of dead soldiers’ bodies. Each bag of bodies had her name and possible cause of death written on it. But one bag was marked “NM SPAS 757”. This code was supposed to identify an unknown dead soldier with cause of death damage to the coronary artery. After 3 weeks, the body was identified in Ukraine. The body was not that of a soldier. Nor of a man, but a woman. The dead was of one of the most famous Ukrainian civilians captured by the Russians. The person killed was Victoria Roshchyna.
The forensic examination concludes that Victoria Roshchyna had injuries consistent with torture. These included bruises, broken ribs and possible traces of electric shocks. A bone in her neck was also broken. Such an injury could indicate suffocation. A war crimes investigation has been launched with the aim of prosecuting those responsible. Victoria Roshchyna is not alone among Ukrainian civilians arrested and tortured. It is believed that as many as 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are in Russian captivity.
Victoria Roshchyna was never convicted or given a lawyer or a trial. She was simply arrested, against all international law.
Russia and journalists
Russia has a long tradition of imprisoning and killing journalists. One of these is Anna Politkovskaya, who I wrote a blog about earlier. Most media in Russia are controlled by the country’s dictatorship. Freedom of the press does not exist in practice. Journalists who don’t report what the government doesn’t like are persecuted. They are often arrested and killed.
Torture and murder of civilians can never be defended, not even in war. A journalist is a civilian. Nor can it be defended that people are held as prisoners without access to a lawyer. A constitutional state is not Russia, it is a dictatorship. Victoria Roshchyna was killed in a Russian prison ship because she conveyed a message Putin did not want.