The body of a Ukrainian journalist killed in Russia was repatriated without her eyes or brain, an international investigation has found.
Viktoria Roshchyna disappeared in the summer of 2023 near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, on what was at least her fourth trip to the occupied territories.
She was held in an unofficial detention centre in Rostov for at least a year, unable to contact the outside world aside from one four-minute phone conversation with her parents.
Viktoria died aged 27 after a year in detention, and in February her remains were finally repatriated to Ukraine.
She was one of 757 Ukrainian military casualties handed over by Russia, and each of the other bodies came with a name, number, location, and sometimes a cause of death – but according to their paperwork, she was an ‘unidentified man’.
It took weeks for officials to confirm those unidentified remains were in fact Viktoria Roshchyna – and some of her body parts were missing, including her brain, eyes, and larynx.
Her head had also been shaved.
Preliminary forensic investigation found ‘numerous signs of torture’ including burn marks on her feet from electric shocks, abrasions on the hips and head, and a broken rib.
Sources close to the official investigation told The Guardian that Viktoria’s hyoid bone in her neck was broken – the sort of damage which can occur during strangulation.
But due to her missing body parts, the exact cause of her death may never be known.
Viktoria’s death was first confirmed when her father Volodymyr Roshchyn received a letter from the Russian authorities.
He remained hopeful that his daughter was still alive until her body was finally identified through DNA testing.
She was held without any access to communication with the outside world – a serious human rights violation according to international law – and a war crimes investigation into her death has been opened.
According to an initial report, Viktoria was held in a temporary detention centre in Melitopol, and according to a cellmate who was later released from the prison, she was tortured with knives and electric shocks.
Towards the end of 2023 she was transferred to another prison, known as Sizo 2, but her condition deteriorated here.
Other prisoners were water-boarded, beaten, shocked in an electric chair, and given very small rations of food.
Viktoria stopped eating, her weight dropping to 30kg (less than 5st), and she struggled to move without help.
In April 2024 her family received a letter from the Russian defence ministry saying she ‘has been detained and is currently in the territory of the Russian Federation’. It gave no other details.
Colleagues at Ukrainian Pravda, where she worked, started pulling string to try and get her released – and a message was even passed to Pope Francis at the Vatican, who agreed to ask for her name to be added to the prisoner exchange list.
Viktoria was told she was due to be released – but when the prisoner exchange date arrived on September 13 of last year, she was missing.
Weeks later, the deputy head of Russia’s military police wrote to her father to say she had died on September 19.
Volodymyr refused to believe his daughter was dead and wrote several letters demanding information. Sizo 2 director Aleksandr Shtoda has replied twice claiming she was never there, saying in January she ‘is not and was not listed in the databases’.
Viktoria bravely went to the Russian-occupied territories to try and uncover the alleged abduction and torture of Ukrainian citizens.
Ukraine believes as many as 16,000 of its civilians could be held in more than 180 Russian detention camps without charge.
The UN has described Russia’s treatment of detainees as ‘disturbing and the scale is extreme’.
Alice Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, told the Washington Post: ‘I have documented serious cases of torture, including mock executions, all types of beatings, electricity being applied to ears and genitals and other parts of the body, waterboarding, as well as threats and actual rapes and sexual violence.’
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