Forbidden stories: Ukrainian journalist went to document torture in Russian detention — her body returned without organs

The body of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was returned to Ukraine in February 2025 among 757 corpses exchanged with Russia, showing unmistakable signs of torture and missing vital organs, according to Forbidden Stories’ three-month long investigation.

Around 33 Ukrainian journalists are currently being held in Russian captivity, who face fabricated charges, torture, and inhumane conditions. Ukraine’s envoy Yurii Vitrenko urged the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to act against these violations, referring also to journalists killed either by Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine or tortured to death in Russian detention centers.

An OSCE representative on Freedom of Media, Jan Braathu, responded to Roshchyna’s death, saying he was “horrified” by the findings.

Forensic investigators discovered “numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment on the victim’s [Roshchyna’s] body, including abrasions and haemorrhages, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on her feet,” according to Yurii Belousov, head of Ukraine’s War Crimes Unit.

Her body showed neck bruising consistent with a possibly broken hyoid bone, a rare fracture typically associated with strangulation. The corpse was in a state of mummification after being frozen.

Roshchyna’s corpse arrived “with signs of an autopsy that was performed before arrival in Ukraine” and missing critical organs – including parts of her brain, larynx, and eyeballs. Investigators believe this may represent a deliberate attempt to conceal the cause of death.

Forbidden Stories, an organization that pursues the work of threatened journalists, conducted a three-month investigation with 45 journalists from 13 news outlets to trace Roshchyna’s path through Russian detention.

Ukrainian journalist went to investigate cruel Russian detention system and became its victim herself

Viktoriia Roshchyna, 26, disappeared in August 2023 while investigating Russia’s detention system in occupied Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine, where she was originally from. 

She had been compiling a list of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents responsible for the detention and torture of Ukrainian civilians before being captured herself.

Despite being previously detained for a week in March 2022 by Russian intelligence services in Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Roshchyna continued her dangerous work.

Between February 2022 and July 2023, she traveled to Russian-held territories at least four times, according to her editor at online news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Sevgil Musaieva.

In July 2023, Roshchyna embarked on what would be her final reporting trip, traveling from Kyiv to Poland by minibus, then crossing from Latvia into Russia on 26 July. Border documents showed her destination as Melitopol, but she first traveled to Enerhodar via Mariupol to investigate torture centers.

Russian security services captured her shortly after, in August 2023, when she was declared missing in Ukraine, however, only after eight months, in April 2024, Russian authorities confirmed to her father that she was being held in Russia.

Detainees endure severe torture in Russian captivity

Former detainees and cellmates provided harrowing accounts of Roshchyna’s treatment in captivity. After her initial capture in Enerhodar, she was transferred to Melitopol, where she was held in an informal torture and detention center known as “the garages.”

“She was whipped and tortured on an equal basis with everyone else right there in Melitopol,” said Yevheny Markevich, a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW).

By late December 2023, she was transferred to SIZO-2 in Taganrog, Russia, a pre-trial detention center notorious for extreme prisoner abuse. 

A cellmate confirmed Roshchyna had scars appearing to be knife wounds on her arms and legs.

“I saw several scars on her body – definitely on her arm and leg. She had a knife wound, a fresh scar. Between the wrist and elbow in the soft tissues. And the scar was about three centimeters,” Roshchyna’s cellmate from Taganrog told investigators.

The cellmate added that Roshchyna was tortured with electricity multiple times:

“I know that [they tortured her] with electricity more than once. And she didn’t say how many times, but she said she was all blue,” adding that the electric current may have been connected to Roshchyna’s ears.

In Taganrog, Roshchyna shared a small cell with three other civilian women. Despite her circumstances, she remained defiant.

“She called them ‘executioners, murderers,'” Markevich recalled. “Personally, I admired it. None of us were like that.”

By summer 2024, her health had deteriorated dramatically.

“She was in such a state that she could not even lift her head off the pillow,” a cellmate reported. She was eventually hospitalized and returned with an IV mark on her arm.

Father still hopes for her return even after death confirmation

In late August 2024, Volodymyr Roshchyn received a call from his daughter for the first time in over a year. Speaking in Russian rather than Ukrainian, suggesting she wasn’t alone, Viktoriia told her father: “I was promised that I would be home in September, and that we should get ready to meet her.”

According to the family’s lawyer, Yevhenia Kapalkina, the call resulted from “high-level” negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian sides. Her editor Musaieva said intelligence sources also indicated Roshchyna would be included in a prisoner swap scheduled for mid-September.

Instead, in October, her father Volodymyr received an email from the Russian Ministry of Defense announcing his daughter’s death in captivity on 19 September – though witnesses report she was removed from her cell on 8 September, leaving nearly two weeks unaccounted for.

Despite forensic evidence, Volodymyr Roshchyn still refuses to believe his daughter has died.

“I still do not know what happened to her, and why she was not included in the exchange on 13 September 2024,” he told Forbidden Stories. “All this time my family supports me, we pray for Vika and believe everything will be fine.”

The world needs to hold Russia accountable for its crimes

Forbidden Stories indicates Roshchyna is the only known Ukrainian journalist to die in Russian captivity during the war. Her case highlights Russia’s broader system of “ghost detainees,” with an estimated 16,000-20,000 Ukrainian civilians held in informal detention centers across occupied territories and Russia, with their fates 

Roshchyna’s editor emphasized the information vacuum created by her death:

“After she disappeared, there is no coverage of what is happening in occupied territories,” Musaieva said.

Leading Ukrainian media organizations, including editors-in-chief from Euromaidan Press, Ukrainska Pravda, and Hromadske, issued a joint statement calling on international media to conduct independent investigations into Roshchyna’s death.

The statement urges global media and institutions like the UN to establish an independent commission to probe her death and calls on the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure access to prisoners, emphasizing that attacks on journalists threaten free speech and democratic principles.

“When journalists are unlawfully detained, it is not only an attack on individuals but also an assault on the right of everyone to freely express themselves and receive uncensored information,” the statement read.

OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media Braathu also emphasized that such treatment violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Heorhii Tykhyi, thanked the OSCE for its firm stance, stating that Russia’s systematic torture and mistreatment of detainees requires a strong international response.