Viktoriia Roshchyna: The Ukrainian Journalist Who Dared to Tell the Truth—and Paid with Her Life

Viktoriia Roshchyna was not your average war correspondent. She didn’t report from the safety of press briefings or sanitized hotel rooms. No, she plunged headfirst into the heart of darkness—Russian-occupied Ukraine—armed with nothing but a notebook, a camera, and an unyielding commitment to uncovering the truth.

In August 2023, Roshchyna disappeared while investigating the Kremlin’s clandestine detention centers near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Her mission: to expose the fate of thousands of Ukrainians who had vanished into Russia’s shadowy prison system. She knew the risks. She went anyway. That’s bravery. 

Into the Abyss

For months, silence. Then, in May 2024, Russia finally admitted to holding her. She had been detained in Melitopol, then transferred to the notorious SIZO-2 facility in Taganrog—a place described by survivors as a modern-day gulag, where torture is common and institutionalized.

In Taganrog, Roshchyna endured electric shocks, beatings, and starvation. A fellow inmate recalled that she weighed a mere 30 kilograms (about 66 pounds) before her death. She was scheduled for a prisoner exchange in September 2024, but instead, she died en route to Moscow. The official cause of death? Undefined. The real cause? Systematic, state-sanctioned torture.

The State of Viktoriia Roshchyna’s Body Upon Return

When Ukraine finally got Viktoriia Roshchyna back in February 2025, what they received was not the body of a war correspondent—it was the grotesque shell of a woman who had clearly been brutalized, starved, and systematically dismantled. The Russians had labeled the body as an “unidentified male,” but Ukrainian forensic experts ran the DNA and confirmed what everyone feared—it was Roshchyna.

Let’s talk about what they found, and brace yourself because this isn’t for the faint of heart. Her body was missing several key organs—namely, her brain, eyes, and parts of her larynx and trachea. These aren’t the sort of things that just fall out of someone post-mortem. International forensic experts said flat-out: this kind of organ removal isn’t routine.

It looked more like a surgical effort to erase forensic evidence of suffocation or strangulation. Think about that—the people who killed her weren’t content just to torture her. They wanted to make sure nobody could prove how they did it.

Her physical condition was a horror show. She was so emaciated that she looked like she’d wasted away in a medieval dungeon. Her body had been frozen—likely in a morgue or meat locker—which caused partial mummification. This wasn’t just a frozen corpse; this was a message. The Russians sent her back like a discarded experiment gone wrong, hoping Ukraine wouldn’t ask too many questions. And, honestly, not caring if they did.

But questions were asked—and the answers were sickening. She had a broken rib. Burn marks on her feet, consistent with electrotorture, like something out of Stalin’s KGB playbook. Her neck had severe bruising, and worse, a fractured hyoid bone—a bone that’s buried deep in the throat and usually only breaks during strangulation. That’s more than a smoking gun, it’s a flashing neon sign that says “She was murdered.”

They also found knife wounds and abrasions on her head and hip, and internal hemorrhaging across multiple parts of her body. The body had clearly been autopsied—presumably by Russian officials—long before being handed over. But let’s not kid ourselves: that wasn’t an autopsy, that was a cleanup job. A cover-up. A forensic disappearing act. The removal of the larynx and eyes especially suggests a calculated effort to destroy the biological black box that could’ve told the story of her final hours.

The Russians slapped the number 757 on her body and tagged it with the abbreviation “SPAS.” Nobody can say for sure what that means, but Ukrainian sources speculate it’s code for “total failure of the arteries of the heart”—an absurdly clinical phrase, probably concocted to make her death sound natural. As if anyone believes that.

In short, the condition of Viktoriia Roshchyna’s body paints a picture that’s as clear as it is horrifying. She was tortured, starved, and likely strangled, and then her captors tried to erase the evidence. The only thing they couldn’t erase was the truth—because Roshchyna, even in death, is telling the world exactly what the Russian regime does to those who dare speak out.

It’s one thing to kill a journalist. It’s another to mutilate her body and lie about it. But they forgot one thing: people like Viktoriia don’t stay silent—not in life, and certainly not in death.

The Viktoriia Project

In response to her death, Forbidden Stories launched the Viktoriia Project—a coalition of 13 international media outlets committed to continuing her work. Their investigation uncovered a vast network of over 180 detention sites where approximately 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are held without charges, subjected to torture, and denied basic human rights.

Roshchyna’s reporting had threatened to expose this brutal system. Her murder was an attempt to bury the truth, but we won’t let that happen. 

A Legacy of Courage

Viktoriia Roshchyna was a brave war journalist and a beacon of integrity in a world shrouded in propaganda and lies. In 2022, she received the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award. She declined to attend the ceremony, opting instead to continue her reporting from the front lines.

Her death is a dark reminder of the perils faced by those who dare to speak truth to power. But her legacy endures—in the stories she told, the lives she touched, and her fellow journalists who now carry her torch.

Final Thoughts

In the end, Roshchyna’s captors failed. They tried to silence her, to erase her. But the world is watching. Her story has been told, and it will not be forgotten. The truth she died for will continue to shine, piercing through the darkness of tyranny and oppression.

Let this be a rallying cry for all who value freedom, justice, and the indomitable spirit of those who risk everything to reveal the truth.

We refuse to be silenced.