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Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who was taken prisoner by Russian forces, died on 19 September 2024 in pre-trial detention centre No. 3 in the town of Kizel, Perm region, reports Slidstvo.Info.

According to the publication, they managed to find information about Roshchyna’s death in closed Russian databases. Journalists obtained her death certificate, issued by the civil registry office in Leninsky district of Perm.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed to the publication that Roshchyna died on this date and, specifically, in SIZO-3.

“She was at that location for less than two weeks, and her death occurred there. Specifically, in the detention centre in Kizel,” said Taras Semkiv, Deputy Head of the Department for Countering Crimes Committed in Conditions of Armed Conflict at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.

He added that the Russian side handed Roshchyna’s body back to Ukraine in a condition that made a full forensic medical examination to determine the cause of death impossible.

At the same time as Roshchyna, a Ukrainian prisoner of war was being held in SIZO-3; he later returned home in April 2025 as part of a prisoner exchange and spoke with Slidstvo.Info. He said he first met the journalist in Taganrog’s SIZO-2. There, she said she expected to be exchanged soon.

In September 2024, the soldier, Roshchyna, and other Ukrainian prisoners were taken to the detention centre in Kizel. The soldier recalled that they travelled by train for three days—from 9 to 11 September. According to him, at that time Roshchyna looked drawn and even thinner than before, but she could still walk on her own.

After getting off the train, the prisoners were transferred to police vans and taken to SIZO-3. Ukrainian soldiers who had been held there told the publication that upon arrival they were beaten.

“For an hour or two I was beaten constantly. They’d give me a minute to catch my breath, then start beating me again. I lost consciousness twice during the ‘admission process.’ The women were shaved bald, you could hear them crying,” said the same soldier who was transferred with Roshchyna.

Two sources told Slidstvo.Info that as a result of severe beatings during “admission” to SIZO-3, a civilian prisoner, the mayor of Dniprorudne (a town in the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine), Yevhen Matveyev, was killed. He had spent more than two and a half years in Russian captivity.

The violence continued after arrival. 22-year-old Danylo Murashkin, who was returned to Ukraine in July 2025, reported that he was forced to stand in one place all day and was forbidden to move around the cell or sit down. Talking with cellmates was also forbidden. During the winter, detention centre staff would open the windows.

According to Murashkin, while in Kizel SIZO he had his back burned with a stun gun and his wounds started to fester. “It was their favourite toy. … Once they shocked me so hard I lost consciousness,” he recalled.

Roshchyna died eight days after being transferred to this detention centre.

Slidstvo.Info notes that in September 2024, the position of acting head of SIZO-3 was held by 39-year-old Vitaliy Spirin.

Earlier, there were reports that the journalist died while being transferred to Moscow.

Roshchyna’s body was returned to Ukraine at the end of February 2025, five months after her death. The body was handed over missing some internal organs. Sources for Important Stories suggested this was an attempt by Russian authorities to conceal evidence of torture. There were many signs of abuse on Roshchyna’s body: abrasions and haemorrhaging, a broken rib, neck injury and likely traces of electric shocks on her feet.

One of Roshchyna’s cellmates in Taganrog SIZO told Slidstvo.Info that the journalist was tortured. She had knife wounds on her body, received while in captivity in the occupied territories.

  • Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023, shortly after crossing the Latvia–Russia border. It took the Russian Ministry of Defence nine months to confirm to her father that the journalist had “been detained and is currently on the territory of the Russian Federation.” Roshchyna was heading to occupied Ukrainian territories to find places where kidnapped Ukrainians were being tortured and identify those involved.
  • She worked with many media outlets, including Hromadske, Ukrayinska Pravda and Radio Svoboda. In March 2022, in the early days of the war, Roshchyna, who was reporting from the occupied territories, was also detained by Russian troops. She was released a few days later, but only after being forced to record a video address saying she had “no complaints against the Russian side.” She subsequently returned to the occupied territories at least twice more and also published materials about the abduction and torture of local residents by Russian military and security forces.