Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity, suffered a fractured occipital bone while being held at a pretrial detention center in Taganrog, Ukrainian police found. Dmytro Shevchuk, a department deputy head at Ukraine’s National Police, reported the finding, according to the Institute of Mass Information.
Shevchuk said the fracture was discovered during a forensic examination. Police also said Roshchyna was systematically abused by the center’s guards for demanding proper food and detention conditions and refusing to sing the Russian national anthem.
Roshchyna was held in a cell at Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in the city of Taganrog under unsanitary conditions. The cell had no hot water, and she was only given three minutes for meals, during which she also had to wash her dishes. From morning until lights out, she was forbidden to sit or lie down.
Ukrainian law enforcement officials said the head of the detention facility was aware that Roshchyna was in very serious condition but ignored it. They also said that she remained in critical condition during her transfer to Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 in Kizel, where she later died.
Investigators said Roshchyna died on Sept. 19, 2024, a week after arriving at the Kizel detention center. They said the cause was the prolonged abuse she suffered while in captivity.
Viktoriia Roshchyna was captured in the summer of 2023 while preparing reports from Russian-occupied territories. Ukrainian media previously reported that she was systematically tortured with electric shocks while in custody. Multiple stab wounds were also found on her body, and her cellmates in a detention facility in Russia’s Rostov Region said she weighed about 30 kilograms, or 66 pounds.
Russian authorities officially acknowledged holding Viktoriia Roshchyna in captivity only in May 2024. She died in September, and her body was later returned to Ukraine in an exchange of remains. It arrived at a morgue in Vinnytsia in a bag labeled “NM SPAS 757,” meaning “unidentified male, extensive damage to the coronary arteries, serial number 757.” Inside, a tag on her shin read “7390 Roshchyna V. V.”
Later reports said that some of Viktoriya Roshchyna’s internal organs had been removed before the exchange. Multiple media outlets reported that her eyeballs, brain, and part of the larynx were missing, and that the hyoid bone had been broken.
