An investigation has revealed that the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna died on 19 September 2024 in a pre-trial detention centre within the city of Kizel, Perm Krai, Russia. Beforehand, she was recognized to have been held within the occupied territories and in Taganrog, however the place of her demise had remained unknown.
Supply: an investigation by Slidstvo.Data, an unbiased Ukrainian workforce of investigative journalists
Particulars: The journalists discovered Roshchyna’s demise certificates in closed Russian databases. It was issued by the Leninsky division of the registry workplace of Perm Metropolis Administration. The date of demise was recorded as 19 September 2024.
Roshchyna’s demise certificates Picture: Slidstvo.Data
Ukrainian prosecutor Taras Semkiv stated that Roshchyna’s demise occurred within the detention centre in Kizel. The official reason for demise has not but been established, as her physique was introduced again to Ukraine in a situation that didn’t enable a full forensic examination to be carried out.
Quote from Semkiv: "She had been there for lower than two weeks, and it was there that she died. It occurred within the pre-trial detention centre within the city of Kizel."
Particulars: The journalists additionally spoke with a witness who travelled on the identical jail practice as Roshchyna throughout her switch to Kizel.
Former prisoner of warfare Danylo stated that on 11 September 2024, eight days earlier than her demise, Roshchyna was transferred from the Taganrog detention centre to detention centre No. 3 in Kizel, Perm Krai.
The switch took three days, from 9 to 11 September. Danylo stated: "She walked previous a few instances, they have been escorting her to the bathroom. She was very skinny, nothing however bones."
The prisoners have been subjected to extreme abuse in the course of the so-called consumption course of on the Kizel detention centre on 11 September.
"I used to be crushed for an hour or two. They’d give me a minute to catch my breath after which begin once more. Throughout the consumption I misplaced consciousness twice. The ladies’s heads have been shaved, you may hear them crying," Danylo recalled.
Semkiv famous that all through your entire interval of Viktoriya Roshchyna’s captivity – since August 2023 – Russia by no means formally acknowledged that she was being held in detention.
Background:
- In March 2022, Roshchyna was captured by Russian forces and held for 10 days within the quickly occupied metropolis of Berdiansk.
- In 2022, Roshchyna wrote a sequence of articles for Ukrainska Pravda from the quickly occupied territories. Her work included tales about life in occupied Crimea in the course of the warfare, the sham referendum in occupied Donetsk Oblast, and a photograph report from the devastated metropolis of Mariupol.
- On 25 July 2023, Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland, planning to make the three-day journey by way of Russia to the occupied a part of Ukraine's east.
- On 3 August 2023, Roshchyna went lacking in Russian-occupied territory.
- It was not till Might 2024 that Russia admitted to having detained Roshchyna. The Russian Ministry of Defence despatched a letter confirming this to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn.
- Russia delayed the repatriation of Roshchyna’s physique, which was solely returned in February 2025.
- The Workplace of the Prosecutor Basic reported that Roshchyna’s physique bore a number of indicators of torture and ill-treatment: abrasions, bruises, a damaged rib and proof of electrocution.
- The investigative workforce conducting the inquiry confirmed that the physique was introduced again to Ukraine after an post-mortem carried out in Russia. Journalists realized from regulation enforcement sources that the physique was lacking a number of inside organs – the mind, the eyeballs and a part of the trachea. A world forensic pathologist believes this may increasingly have been an try to hide the true reason for demise, together with potential suffocation.
- Viktoria’s funeral was held in Kyiv on 8 August.
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