Details of the final days in captivity of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died in 2024, have emerged with a soldier’s account of her transport to a prison deep inside Russia. Roshchyna was seized while reporting from behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine in the summer of 2022, and was one of an estimated 16,000 civilians detained by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Viktoriia Roshchyna’s Final Journey
A Ukrainian soldier with the Azov regiment, released this summer, has corroborated recent reports that Roshchyna died after being transported to Sizo-3, a prison in the town of Kizel, near the Ural mountains.
Speaking to reporters from the Viktoriia Project, an investigation led by the Guardian and Forbidden Stories, Mykyta Semenov said Roshchyna’s last journey began by train and ended on trucks. He first saw the journalist as she walked down the corridor to go to the toilet.
“I saw her. She walked past our compartment,” said Semenov. “She was wearing a light blue summer dress with flowers. She also had summer sneakers with white soles, sporty ones. And she had a small makeup mirror she carried with her.”
Roshchyna was walking with her hands behind her back in a stress position. Having been on hunger strike while held at another facility, she was visibly in poor health.
“It looked like everything was difficult for her: walking was difficult, eating was difficult, speaking was difficult. It seemed like that dress of hers … that the dress was carrying her. Holding her up.”
The Russian Ministry of Defence informed her family of her death at age 27 on September 19, 2024. The cause and place of her death have not been officially confirmed. An autopsy of her remains, returned to Ukraine, showed multiple signs of torture, according to the investigating prosecutor.
Conditions in Detention
Roshchyna had previously spent nearly nine months in the Sizo-2 pre-trial detention facility in Taganrog. Conditions at the prison, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, were so appalling it has become known as the “Russian Guantánamo”.
She had been told she was due to be released in a prisoner exchange, but instead was sent hundreds of miles east. Semenov said Roshchyna and the other prisoners left Taganrog on September 9, arriving in Kizel a few days later, on September 11.
“She was very, very thin. Barely able to stand. I could see she had once been a beautiful girl, but they had turned her into a mummy: yellow skin, hair that looked … not alive.”
Held in the adjacent cell, Semenov identified her by listening to her conversations with the Russian FSIN prison service guards. Roshchyna was able to exchange food with others with the help of guards.
“I remember that she didn’t eat meat. I don’t know why. She said she had something going on with her body and couldn’t digest it any more. So she would give us the meat from her rations, and we gave her vegetables, zucchini spread, things like that.”
A fellow soldier told Semenov that Roshchyna had “pushed hard for her rights at Taganrog” and been given more freedom than other detainees. She had gone on hunger strike to protest the conditions.
The journey to Kizel was violent, with guards drinking alcohol throughout. The unit chief ordered his officers to seek out fighters from the Azov regiment for beatings. Semenov’s cellmate was beaten and returned after 15 to 20 minutes.
“I let him catch his breath and asked what happened. And he told me. That the chief had a deputy – a paratrooper. That the two of them beat him in the face, beat him in the liver area. Both were drunk.” At one point, the beating was filmed on a video call.
Upon arrival at Kizel, the prisoners were beaten again, in a “reception” ritual common throughout the Russian prison system. “When I jumped out of the truck, they threw a black bag over me. They put us on our knees. There wasn’t enough air. They started shouting, asking our unit, our age. And screams and groans were coming from all sides.”
Conditions in Kizel were harsh. Prisoners had to wait for permission to drink water, go to the toilet, or even sit. They were forced to stand most of the time. No speaking, gestures, or having hands in pockets was allowed, and compliance was monitored through surveillance cameras.
Officers, members of the FSIN, concealed their identities with balaclavas and nicknames.
Public data indicates that Vitaly Spirin, 39, was the acting director of Sizo-3 in Kizel at the time Roshchyna was held there. Spirin hung up without responding to questions when contacted by phone. The FSIN did not respond to a request for comment.
Prison bosses at Taganrog were added to the EU sanctions list last month, following the findings of the Viktoriia Project.
Semenov was eventually returned home this summer. The last he heard of Roshchyna, she was still refusing food. “I heard that she was somewhere in another building. And some other woman was held with her. I heard that she had health problems, and that they were even allowed to sit in the cell. And that Vika continued to hunger strike there.”
Roshchyna survived for only eight days at Kizel. Russia has not provided a death certificate to her family, but the autopsy found bruises on her neck and a fracture of her hyoid bone, indicating trauma usually caused by strangulation.
Ukrainian news site Slidstvo.Info recently reported obtaining information from closed Russian databases about her death certificate, reportedly issued by the Leninsky department of civil status records of the Perm city administration, with a date of death of September 19, 2024.
Ukrainian prosecutors have confirmed they believe Roshchyna died while in detention at Kizel.
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