# Victoria Roshchyna

Victoria Volodymyrivna Roshchyna (Ukrainian: Вікторія Володимирівна Рощина; 6 October 1996 – 19 September 2024) was a Ukrainian journalist who reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Siege of Mariupol. She was a recipient of the International Women's Media Foundation's 2022 Courage in Journalism Award. Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023, and in October 2024 was confirmed to have died in Russian detention. The Ukrainian government announced it would investigate her death as a potential murder and war crime.

## Early life

Victoria Roshchyna was born on 6 October 1996. Roshchyna's hometown was Zaporizhzhia. She had one sister.

## Career

Victoria Roshchyna began working as a journalist when she was a teenager, covering court decisions and crime. After the 2022 Russian invasion and occupation of Eastern Ukraine, she started to write about living in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and the Siege of Mariupol. She worked as a freelance journalist for Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Free Europe, and Hromadske.
She was detained by the Russian military in Vasylivka in March 2022, but managed to escape after hiding in a basement overnight.
In early March 2022, her car was fired on by Russian tanks. She and her driver escaped, but her computer and camera were stolen. On 11 March Roshchyna was detained in Berdiansk by the Russian Federal Security Service for ten days. She was only allowed free after she made a videotape stating that the Russian forces had saved her life. She wrote an article about her time in captivity for Hromadske. Later that year, she was given a Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF). She refused to attend the award ceremony, so she could instead focus on her reporting.

## Disappearance and death

In July 2023, Roshchyna went to Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, possibly to report on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant crisis and the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. To enter the territory, she planned to go through Poland and Russia. She told her family on 3 August 2023 that she had passed through the border checks; it was the last time they heard from her. They reported her as missing on 12 August, and officially filed a report on 21 September. Her disappearance was made public on 4 October 2023 by her family, through reports in The Daily Beast and Ukrainska Pravda. According to Anna Nemtsova, the author of The Daily Beast article and friend of Roshchyna's, she published the article "to raise hell" and out of hope that if Roshchyna was still alive, her captors would "stop torturing her".
Around 22 April 2024, her father Volodymyr Mykhaylovych (Ukrainian: Володимир Михайлович) received a letter dated 17 April 2024 from the Russian government which confirmed that they were holding Roshchyna in detention.
The IWMF called her detention "unjust" and the European Union described it as "illegal" and "arbitrary". Human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina announced she had written to Tatyana Moskalkova, then Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, asking for an update on Roshchyna's status. Sevgil Musayeva, her editor at Ukrainska Pravda, and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine called for her immediate release.
Her death was announced on 10 October 2024 by Petro Yatsenko of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. In a letter to her family, Russian officials said that she had died on 19 September 2024. Her cause of death remains unknown. Russian news organization Mediazona reported that she was in the process of being transferred to Moscow at the time of her death. According to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, Roshchyna was on a prisoner exchange list and was being held in the Russian city of Taganrog. The Ukrainian NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights also said that she had been held in penal colony number 77 in Berdiansk prior to her transfer to pre-trial detention centre #2 in Taganrog. Both centres have been accused of torturing prisoners.
Reporters Without Borders, the IWMF, the European Union, and the Committee to Protect Journalists called for an investigation into her death and detention. On 11 October, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced it was treating her disappearance as a potential murder and a war crime. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy described her death as "a real blow" to journalists in Ukraine.
Her body was scheduled to be returned to Ukraine on 18 October 2024. It had not yet been returned as of March, 2025.

## Publications

* Roshchyna, Victoria (26 March 2022). "Тиждень у полоні окупантів. Як я вибралася з рук ФСБ, «кадирівців» і дагестанців" [A week in captivity of the occupiers. How I got out of the hands of the FSB, "Kadyrovets" and Dagestanis]. Hromadske.