The Viktoriia Project

At the end of her journey, Viktoriia Roshchyna, that tireless investigator, has herself become the subject of an investigation. Forensic scientists in Ukraine are currently examining the journalist’s ravaged body. They want to find out how Roshchyna died and what she had to endure in Russian captivity before her death at the age of 27.

The reporter was arrested in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine in the summer of 2023 and later taken to a detention centre in the southern Russian city of Taganrog. She spent more than 400 days in Russian captivity.

This February, the Russians handed over Roshchyna’s body to Ukraine along with the bodies of more than 750 dead soldiers. It lay in a white bag on the back of a lorry and was almost overlooked: her name was not on the list that Russia had provided.

Only when Ukrainian investigators in Vinnytsia thaw the frozen bodies do they discover a female body in a bag marked “male” and a tag with the name “Roshchyna” on the shin.

The emaciated body with the shaved head reportedly shows numerous signs of torture, a broken rib, bruises on the head, injuries to the back of the neck, and traces of electric shocks. A DNA test confirms that the body is that of the well-known Ukrainian journalist.

According to sources close to the investigation, the body, which was already partially mummified, was missing its eyeballs, parts of the larynx, and the brain. It is unclear why these were removed; one possibility is that Roshchyna’s tormentors wanted to conceal the cause of death.

Viktoriia’s father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, learned of his daughter’s death from a written notification issued by the Russian Ministry of Defence in October 2024. The statement said that Viktoriia Roshchyna, born on 6 October 1996, had died on 19 September 2024.

The sober letter to Roshchina’s father does not mention the cause of death. It states that her body would be handed over to Ukraine as part of an exchange, but the journalist is not included in either the first or second subsequent exchange of bodies.

Roshchyna’s disappearance in the occupied territories is the subject of much discussion in Ukraine at the time and is widely reported in the media. Even Pope Francis gets involved. Former fellow journalists try to find out where she is being held.

Later, the return of her body becomes a politicised issue. There is even a secret meeting on the Belarusian border in mid-January 2025, with Russian and Ukrainian representatives negotiating the matter.

The slender young woman was one of the few journalists who dared to report from the regions occupied by Russia. According to her colleagues, Roshchyna saw it as her duty to expose the crimes of the Russian occupiers. Millions of Ukrainians live in a climate of fear and repression in the parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions annexed by Russia in 2022. Roshchyna wanted to give them a voice. Since the start of Russia’s war of aggression three years ago, she had probably travelled to the occupied territories a total of four times, even though the Russian authorities do not officially grant access to foreign journalists or investigators.

In Enerhodar in southern Ukraine, the reporter speaks to workers who keep the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant running despite intimidation and repression. She investigates the horrific story of Tihran and Mykyta, two 16-year-olds from Berdiansk who were accused of sabotage and executed by the occupiers.

She also reports on mercenaries from the Wagner Group, whom Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin is sending to their deaths in droves on the Ukrainian front. “I believe,” Roshchyna is reported to have said to a colleague, “that working in the occupied territories is what journalism is really all about. That’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

The reporter’s last work visit to the occupied territories begins on 25 July 2023. In the afternoon, shortly after 2 p.m., Roshchyna’s phone logs onto a Polish mobile network. This is when the journalist must have crossed the border into the neighbouring country. She wants to travel to the occupied region via Poland, Latvia, and Russia, a dangerous undertaking for a well-known Ukrainian journalist. Russia scrutinises Ukrainians travelling to the occupied territories very closely and refuses entry to quite a few.

This time, Roshchyna wants to find out what happened to thousands of her compatriots who have disappeared without trace since the start of Russia’s war of aggression, allegedly into secret prisons in the occupied regions as well as on Russian territory.

The journalist wants to document these places, including the torture chambers she has heard about. She wants to talk to survivors and identify perpetrators. When Roshchyna crosses the Latvian-Russian border at the Ludonka checkpoint on 26 July, she states on her entry application that her destination is the occupied city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region. After that, Roshchyna’s trail goes cold. At the beginning of August, she briefly contacts her younger sister. Then all contact is lost.

We now know that in the winter of 2023, Roshchyna herself was taken to one of the places she wanted to write about: the notorious Sizo-2 torture prison in Taganrog, southern Russia.

It is not easy to get a sense of who Viktoriia Roshchyna was as a person. Among colleagues, the journalist was considered a solitary figure, a workaholic, determined and meticulous. To protect her sources, she used multiple phones and accounts and set her chats to use “disappearing messages”. Before travelling to the occupied territories on research trips, she would sanitise her phone, deleting photos and other information that might arouse the suspicion of the occupation authorities.

Khrystyna Kotsira, then editor-in-chief of Hromadske, the online media outlet where Roshchyna worked for several years, praises her young colleague’s work ethic. But Roshchyna was “uncontrollable” as an employee, she says. She travelled without consulting her superiors and often disappeared for long periods of time. “She didn’t want to rely on anyone, she didn’t trust anyone,” Kotsira says.

The reporter quickly discovers how dangerous working in the Russian-controlled territory is. In March 2022, she is detained for several days during a research trip to Berdiansk in the Zaporizhzhia region. She later describes how she had to sleep on the floor and to survive on her provisions and sweet tea.

Before her release, she is forced to record an absurd video, which can still be viewed online: in the recording, Roshchyna stands in a bare room next to a potted plant and speaks into the camera, her arms crossed across her chest. Implausibly, she thanks the Russian military. A deliberate act of humiliation, the video is shared on pro-Russian platforms.

Her former boss, Kotsira, says that a psychologist was brought in for Roshchyna after her return because they were very concerned about her. But the reporter was determined to continue her work. At some point, Kotsira felt she could no longer bear the responsibility; she parted ways with the journalist. Roshchyna went freelance, now working entirely on her own.

Roshchyna was born and raised in Kryvyi Rih, the industrial city that is also the native town of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, still lives there. For a meeting with a Ukrainian journalist, he suggests a café in a shopping centre where he used to enjoy sitting with his daughter and taking in the view. A Georgian restaurant has since moved in. From the window, you can see a small church with a blue roof, behind which the Saksahan River rushes through the landscape. On the other bank, the white apartment blocks of the Pokrovsky district stretch almost to the horizon.

Roshchyn recalls that his daughter (whom he refers to by the diminutive form of her name, Vika) always carried her camera around with her as a child and documented everything. She realised early on that she wanted to be a journalist, made videos for her school’s journalism club and, at the age of 21, was already working for Hromadske, the broadcaster that became popular during the Maidan revolution. Before the Russian invasion, Roshchyna mainly wrote about crime and courtroom verdicts. She is interested in the dark and dangerous – and in justice for the victims.

Viktoriia Roshchyna’s last research trip appears to have ended abruptly in the occupied town of Enerhodar. She is believed to have rented accommodation there, paid for three nights in advance, and then set off with her backpack. Later, in the torture prison in Taganrog, she tells a cellmate that she was held for several days in a police station in Enerhodar. She was then apparently taken to Melitopol, 100 kilometres away.

In both places, she is apparently tortured. When Roshchyna arrives in Taganrog in December 2023, her condition is already poor. Her cellmate reports seeing cuts on the journalist’s arms and legs. A man who was imprisoned in the cell next to Roshchyna hears that she is refusing food and losing a lot of weight. Although her voice was already weak, she reportedly challenged the guards: “You are occupiers, you have come to our country, you are murdering our people!”

The journalist’s relatives are unaware of any of this. In August 2023, they report Viktoriia missing. Roshchyna’s father submits requests to the Russian government, asking about his daughter’s whereabouts. But it is not until nine months later, in April 2024, that the authorities inform him in writing that his daughter is being held captive in Russia. The letter states that Viktoriia is imprisoned on “Russian territory”.

According to investigations by the human rights nonprofit Reporters Without Borders, she was hidden away before the Taganrog prison was visited by representatives of the Russian Human Rights Commissioner. This is a common method, at least according to the Ukrainian secret service. In other Russian prisons, they say, torture was suspended three weeks before similar inspection visits, and shortly before the visits, hygiene items, new bedding, and new clothing were distributed – accompanied by the threat that anyone who spoke about torture would be made to suffer it even more severely afterwards.

Her parents can speak to Roshchyna once more in August 2024, around a year after her arrest. The conversation lasts about four minutes and is organised by a Ukrainian government agency. Her father says he couldn’t put his phone down for days because it wasn’t clear when the call would come. When it finally rings, he blurts out: “Where are you? How are you?” he asks her, but Viktoriia, he says, does not answer these questions. She speaks Russian, apparently because someone is listening in the background. Roshchyna tells her family that she misses them and that she has been promised she will be home in September. Her father admonishes her to eat properly. Roshchyna promises she will. “Bye Mum, Dad, I love you!” she says at the end.

According to the family’s attorney, Roshchyna was indeed designated to be part of a prisoner exchange in September. However, things took a different turn.

Roshchyna’s father hears from Russia again in late February. The Taganrog investigative authorities state in a letter that there is no information about a crime in connection with the death of Viktoriia Roshchyna.

This is the inside of Putin’s torture prison

Ukrainian prisoners of war who returned home alive have reported being subjected to torture and violence at the hands of the Russians. However, Vladimir Putin’s regime also appears to be systematically abducting Ukrainian civilians from the occupied territories and torturing them.

The Russian authorities are primarily targeting Ukrainian citizens who stand for social cohesion: local politicians, journalists, priests. People who ask questions, wield influence, organise (or could organise) resistance – and who could therefore stand in the way of complete submission to the occupiers.

Up to 20,000 civilians are estimated to be held in Russian prisons. Ukrainian authorities, together with human rights organisations, have identified 186 detention facilities, some of them informal, where their citizens are being held.

Imprisoned civilians are sometimes even more vulnerable to Russian violence than prisoners of war. For soldiers in captivity, there is at least a framework under international law: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is notified, as is the opposing side. Russia and Ukraine regularly exchange prisoners.

The capture of civilians, however, is not provided for in international law. Nevertheless, according to experts, Russia is holding countless Ukrainian civilians – often months at a time without charges, without contact with the outside world, without any due process. UN experts who analysed hundreds of letters from Russian authorities to relatives of Ukrainian prisoners recently came to a grim conclusion: “Most contained no information at all about the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared.”

One of the best-known Ukrainian victims of torture prisons is the journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna. The then 26-year-old wanted to report on these places of violence, was herself deported to Taganrog – and did not survive Russian captivity. Her body was handed over to Ukraine in February: half decomposed, frozen and thawed again, with a broken rib, bruises on her head, and traces of electric shocks, according to reports.

What do we know about the torture methods?

DER SPIEGEL was able to identify 29 prisons for which there are at least two independent pieces of evidence of torture, mostly statements from former prisoners. They report electric shocks, sexual violence, beatings, and other abuses. According to official figures, these 29 facilities alone have the capacity to hold over 18,000 people.

In total, DER SPIEGEL documented around 700 cases of torture in Russian prisons: detainees were beaten with wooden hammers on their ribs, legs, and arms, tortured with electric shocks to their tongues and genitals, or forced to remain naked in metal cages in sub-zero temperatures.

DER SPIEGEL was able to document 17 different types of torture and abuse, including both physical and psychological forms of violence. 16 of these are used in Taganrog alone, and almost half of them are systematically employed in Russian prisons.

The systematic abduction of Ukrainian civilians to torture prisons constitutes an apparent Russian war crime. Russia is committing these crimes in the legal vacuum of the territories it has annexed in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.

Kyiv authorities have documented tens of thousands of cases of torture and are said to have already identified 300 suspected perpetrators. In the Taganrog case, too, specific individuals have been named: Alexander Alexandrovich Shtoda is the director of the prison, and his deputies are Andrei Mikhailichenko and Alexei Sharapanyuk. Individual guards have also been identified. One was called ‘Wolf,’ another ‘Shaman,’ and a third simply ‘Death.’

Ukrainian prosecutors have already initiated numerous proceedings for torture, with investigators gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, collecting DNA samples, and performing autopsies on corpses. The German Federal Criminal Police Office is also looking into the Russian torture prisons. Its Central Office for the Investigation of War Crimes has been investigating in this matter since November 2024, interviewing more than two dozen witnesses. Because Germany is one of the few countries that applies the principle of universal jurisdiction, crimes can be prosecuted there even if neither the perpetrator nor the victim has any connection to Germany. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office is therefore placing some hope in Berlin.

This investigation is part of the “Viktoriia Project,” initiated and coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a non-profit investigative network based in Paris. The organization continues the work of journalists who have been threatened, imprisoned, or killed because of their investigations. Following the death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna in September 2024, Forbidden Stories launched a multi-month investigation in collaboration with SPIEGEL, ZEIT, ZDF, and international partners (The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Tamedia, Der Standard, Important Stories, France 24, Ukrainska Pravda). The journalists attempted to shed light on Viktoriia's disappearance and the circumstances of her death, but above all, they continued the reporter's last project and gathered information about Russian torture prisons.