A farewell ceremony was held in Kyiv on Aug. 8 for Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity after torture in the fall of 2024.
Her death has become a stark symbol of Russia’s systemic abuse of Ukrainian civilians and the brutal risks faced by journalists in occupied territories.
Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted to detaining her the following year.
The journalist’s body was returned to Ukraine in late February 2024, falsely labeled as that of an “unidentified man.” DNA testing later confirmed her identity.
Ukrainian authorities officially confirmed her death on Oct. 10, 2024, though the cause remains under investigation. Russia claims she died on Sept. 19.
A memorial service was held at St. Michael’s Cathedral, followed by a public farewell on Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). Roshchyna will be buried in a Kyiv cemetery.
A media investigation revealed that her body was returned with several missing organs, prompting suspicions that the disfigurement was meant to conceal signs of suffocation.
The day before the ceremony, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office charged the head of Russia’s Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, in absentia for organizing the torture and death of Roshchyna and other Ukrainian detainees.
🕯🇺🇦 Kyiv bids farewell to journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who was killed in Russian captivity.
In Aug. 2023, she went missing while reporting from Russian-occupied territory. Roshchyna had travelled there to document the lives of civilians under Russian control.
When she… pic.twitter.com/GLTI4PI6im
— Denys from Kharkiv (@GlushkoDenys) August 8, 2025
According to prosecutors, Russian forces detained Roshchyna in occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast and transferred her to the Taganrog facility, where she was systematically tortured, denied medical care and water, beaten, and psychologically pressured to cooperate.
The suspect, who has not been publicly named, is accused of inhumane treatment of civilians by a group acting in collusion. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years in prison.
Prosecutors said the suspect knowingly violated international law, including the Geneva Conventions, by targeting a civilian journalist protected under wartime legal norms.
If authoritarians are scared of journalists, we must be doing something right
“How do we continue convincing our few remaining allies that journalists’ work is important?” Last month, I was sitting on stage at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Europe’s biggest journalism conference, when I heard this question from an audience member. The answer came to me fast. “Point at who is killing journalists,” I suggested. I then reminded the room about the case of Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist killed in Russian captivity. She took a huge risk to go
