Ukrainian journalist who chronicled Russian occupation dies in prison

Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023 in part of Ukraine now occupied by Russian forces.

It took 9 months for Russian authorities to confirmed the journalist had been detained. They gave no purpose.

This week, her father obtained a terse letter from the defence ministry in Moscow informing him that Victoria was lifeless, aged 27.

The doc mentioned the journalist’s physique can be returned in one of many swaps organised by Russia and Ukraine for troopers killed on the battlefield. The dying date was given as 19 September.

Once more, there was no rationalization.

This weekend, associates gathered to recollect Viktoriia on the Maidan in central Kyiv. They shuffled into place on the steps holding her {photograph}, younger face smiling out on the small crowd.

“She had enormous braveness,” one lady started the tributes.

“We are going to miss her enormously,” mentioned one other, turning away as her eyes stuffed with tears.

Viktoriia’s tales had been snapshots of life that Ukrainians weren’t getting from wherever else.

Reporting from occupied areas of Ukraine was extraordinarily harmful, however her colleagues keep in mind how she was determined to go there, even after she was detained and held in custody the primary time, for ten days.

“Her mother and father used to name and inform us to cease deploying her, however we by no means did deploy her!” considered one of her former bosses recalled.

“All her editors tried to cease her. However it was not possible.”

The younger reporter ultimately went freelance so as to deploy herself and when she obtained again newspapers would purchase her studies.

Most strikingly, she by no means used a pseudonym although she wrote brazenly of “occupied” territory and referred to those that collaborated with the Russians as “traitors”.

“She needed to supply details about how these cities stay below siege by the Russian military,” Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief at Ukrayinska Pravda, instructed the BBC.

“She was completely wonderful.”

Viktoriia’s father has beforehand described how she set out through Poland and Russia final July, heading for occupied Ukraine.

It was per week earlier than she known as to say she’d been interrogated on the border for a number of days.

All we all know for certain after that, is that by Might she was in Detention Centre No. 2 in Taganrog, southern Russia – a facility so infamous for the brutal remedy of many Ukrainians that some dub it the “Russian Guantanamo”.

Based on the Media Initiative for Human Rights, one other Ukrainian citizen who was launched from Taganrog final month has instructed Viktoriia’s household she noticed the journalist on 8 or 9 September.

Then, there was trigger for hope.

“I used to be 100% certain she’d be again on 13 September this 12 months. My sources gave me 100% ensures,” Musaieva, from Ukrayinska Pravda, says.

She had been instructed Viktoriia can be included in one of many periodic prisoner-of-war swaps that Ukraine and Russia perform, deliberate for the center of final month.

“So what occurred together with her in jail? Why didn’t she come dwelling?”

Viktoriia was moved, with one other Ukrainian lady, however neither had been included within the prisoner alternate.

“Which means she was taken some other place,” says Media Initiative director Tetyana Katrychenko. “They are saying to Lefortovo. Why there? We don’t know.”

She says it’s not regular observe forward of a swap.

Lefortovo jail in Moscow is run by the FSB safety service and used for these accused of espionage and severe crimes in opposition to the state.

“Possibly they took her there to begin some type of courtroom continuing or investigation. That’s occurred to different civilians taken from Kherson and Melitopol,” Tetyana says.

The BBC understands that Viktoriia’s father had spoken to her in jail on 30 August.

In some unspecified time in the future, she had known as a starvation strike, however that day her father urged her to begin consuming once more and he or she agreed.

“That wants investigating. It additionally means we’d be blaming her, partially, and never the Russian Federation, as we must always,” Tetyana cautions.

Ukraine’s intelligence service has confirmed Viktoriia’s dying and the Normal Prosecutor’s workplace has modified its legal case from unlawful detention to homicide.

In Russia, Viktoriia was by no means charged with any crime and the circumstances of her detention usually are not identified.

“A civilian journalist … captured by Russia. Then Russia sends a letter that she died?” Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn instructed the BBC in Kyiv.

“It is killing. Simply the killing of hostages. I do not know different phrase.”

Russia hasn’t commented.

Because the begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion, enormous numbers of civilians have been taken from areas of Ukraine that Moscow has overrun and now controls.

Like Viktoriia’s household, determined family are left with little or no info on their whereabouts or wellbeing, and no concept whether or not they’ll ever get dwelling.

Up to now, the Media Initiative has collated a listing of 1,886 names.

“There’s all kinds of individuals, together with ex-soldiers and law enforcement officials and native officers like mayors,” Tetyana says.

“And naturally there could also be many extra we don’t learn about.”

Neither legal professionals nor the Pink Cross get entry and even when somebody’s location will be confirmed, getting them again dwelling is nearly not possible: civilians are hardly ever swapped.

Viktoriia’s associates and colleagues say they received’t relaxation till they’ve investigated what occurred.

“Her life was her work,” Angelina Karyakina, a former editor at Hromadske says. “It is a uncommon sort of people who find themselves so decided.”

“I am fairly certain the best way she would need us to recollect her is to not stand right here and cry, however to recollect her dignity,” she says.

“And I feel what’s necessary for us journalists, is to search out out what she was engaged on – and to complete her story.”