Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023 in a part of Ukraine now occupied by Russian forces.
It took nine months for Russian authorities to confirm that the journalist had been detained. They gave no reason.
This week her father received a short letter from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow informing him that Victoria was dead at the age of 27.
The document stated that the journalist’s body would be returned in one of the exchanges organized by Russia and Ukraine for soldiers killed on the battlefield. The date of death was given as September 19.
Again there was no explanation.
Wake for Viktoriia
This weekend, friends gathered to remember Viktoriia on the Maidan in central Kiev. They shuffled into position on the stairs and held her picture, their young faces smiling at the small crowd.
“She had enormous courage,” one woman began the tribute.
“We will miss her dearly,” said another, turning away as her eyes filled with tears.
Viktoriia’s stories were snapshots of life that Ukrainians couldn’t get anywhere else.
Reporting from occupied territories in Ukraine was extremely dangerous, but her colleagues remember how desperate she was to go there, even after being detained and held in custody for the first time for ten days.
“Her parents always called us and told us to stop using her, but we never did!” one of her former bosses recalled.
“All her editors tried to stop her. But it was impossible.”
The young reporter eventually turned to freelancing to support herself, and when she returned, newspapers would buy her reports.
Most strikingly, she never used a pseudonym, even though she wrote openly about “occupied” territory and called those who collaborated with the Russians “traitors.”
“She wanted to provide information about how these cities are living under siege by the Russian army,” Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of Ukrayinska Pravda, told the BBC.
“She was absolutely amazing.”
Detention
Viktoriia’s father has previously described how she left via Poland and Russia last July on her way to occupied Ukraine.
It was a week before she called to say she had been interrogated at the border for several days.
All we know for sure after that is that in May she was in Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog, southern Russia – a facility so notorious for its brutal treatment of many Ukrainians that some call it the “Russian Guantanamo.”
According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, another Ukrainian citizen released from Taganrog last month told Viktoriia’s family that she had seen the journalist on September 8 or 9.
Then there was reason for hope.
“I was 100% sure she would be back on September 13 this year. My sources gave me 100% guarantees,” said Musaieva of Ukrayinska Pravda.
She had been told that Viktoriia would be involved in one of the periodic prisoner of war exchanges between Ukraine and Russia, scheduled for the middle of last month.
“So what happened to her in prison? Why didn’t she come home?”
Viktoriia was moved along with another Ukrainian woman, but neither was included in the prisoner exchange.
“That means she was taken somewhere else,” said Media Initiative director Tetyana Katrychenko. “They say to Lefortovo. Why there? We don’t know.”
She says it’s not common before an exchange.
Moscow’s Lefortovo prison is run by the FSB security service and is used for those accused of espionage and serious crimes against the state.
“Maybe they brought her there to start legal proceedings or investigation.” That happened to other civilians taken from Kherson and Melitopol,” Tetyana said.
The BBC understands that Viktoriia’s father spoke to her in prison on August 30.
At one point she had declared a hunger strike, but that day her father urged her to start eating again and she agreed.
“That needs to be investigated. It also means that we partly blame her, and not the Russian Federation, as we should,” Tetyana warns.
Ukrainian intelligence has confirmed Viktoriia’s death and the Prosecutor General’s Office has changed his criminal case from illegal detention to murder.
In Russia, Viktoriia has never been charged with any crime and the circumstances of her detention are unknown.
‘A citizen journalist…captured by Russia. Will Russia then send a letter saying she has died?’ Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn told the BBC in Kiev.
‘It’s killing. Only killing hostages. I don’t know any other word.”
Russia has not commented.
Civilian hostages
Since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion, huge numbers of civilians have been deported from areas of Ukraine that Moscow has overrun and now controls.
Like Viktoriia’s family, desperate relatives have little or no information about their whereabouts or well-being, and no idea if they will ever get home.
So far, the Media Initiative has collected a list of 1,886 names.
“There are all kinds of people, including ex-soldiers and police officers and local officials like mayors,” says Tetyana.
“And of course there could be many more that we don’t know about.”
Neither lawyers nor the Red Cross are given access and even if someone’s location can be confirmed, it is almost impossible to get someone back home: civilians are rarely exchanged.
Viktoriia’s friends and colleagues say they will not rest until they investigate what happened.
“Her life was her work,” says Angelina Karyakina, former editor at Hromadske. “It’s a rare type of people who are so determined.”
“I’m pretty sure the way she wants us to remember her is not by standing here crying, but by remembering her dignity,” she says.
“And I think it’s important for us journalists to find out what she was working on — and to finish her story.”
