More than 18 months after Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna died in a Russian prison, witnesses ... have provided new details about the days leading up to her death. These first-hand accounts have contributed new pieces to a puzzle that the Kremlin still refuses to reveal in its entirety. The international community must obtain explanations for her death from the Russian regime.
Archived version
“Vika isn’t getting up!” On the morning of 19 September 2024, in Detention Centre No. 3 in the city of Kizel, in Russia’s Perm region — 1,700 kilometres east of Ukraine as the crow flies — Victoria Roshchyna did not get up from her bed. Jailed by Russia since her arrest in August 2023 in the occupied territories of Ukraine, this independent Ukrainian journalist lay motionless. The detainees with whom she shared the cell alerted the guards. They arrived, evacuated the other prisoners, and ordered the reporter to stand up – in vain. Victoria Roshchyna was then taken away, ostensibly still unconscious, but it is impossible to know whether she was still alive or not.
Did Victoria Roshchyna die in her cell or elsewhere in the prison? The new witnesses that RSF has been able to speak to, who saw or heard the journalist in the days and weeks preceding her death, do not know. However, they all attested to her extremely weak condition, supporting the findings of an initial investigation carried out in 2025 by RSF and the Ukrainian investigative media outlet Slidstvo.info into the torture she suffered behind bars. In February 2025, five months after her death, Russia returned the journalist’s mutilated body to Ukraine, but, to this day, has said nothing about the exact cause of her death.
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The body that Russia returned to Ukraine was missing several organs, including the brain, larynx and eyeballs, and bore traces of torture, according to the French media consortium Forbidden Stories.
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