Details of the last days in captivity of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who died last year, have emerged with the witness account of a soldier who was with her when she was transported to a prison deep inside Russia.
Roshchyna was seized while reporting from behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine in the summer of 2022, one of an estimated 16,000 civilians detained by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
A Ukrainian soldier with the Azov regiment, who was released this summer, has come forward with an account that corroborates 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 by the Guardian and international media partners led by the French newsroom Forbidden Stories, Mykyta Semenov said Roshchyna’s last journey began by train and ended on trucks.
He travelled in the same wagon, and 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.”
The journalist was walking with her hands behind her back in a stress position. Having been on hunger strike while held at another facility, Roshchyna was by this time in visibly 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 wrote to her family to say she had died, age 27, on 19 September 2024. The cause and place of her death have never been officially confirmed. Her remains, which were returned to Ukraine, showed multiple signs of torture, according to the investigating prosecutor.
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”.
Roshchyna had been told she was due to be released in a prisoner exchange that month, but instead it appears the journalist was sent hundreds of miles east.
Semenov said the prisoners in his group, including Roshchyna, had left Taganrog on 9 September, and arrived in Kizel a few days later, on 11 September.
“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 said he was able to identify her by listening to her conversations with the guards, members of the Russian FSIN prison service.
Roshchyna did manage, he said, 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, he said, to protest at the conditions.
The journey was violent, he said, with the guards drinking alcohol throughout. The unit chief ordered his officers to seek out fighters from the Azov regiment and bring them to him for beatings. The regiment had its origins in a volunteer battalion founded in 2014, when it included many people with far-right leanings, and has been labelled “neo-Nazi” by Russian propaganda ever since. His cellmate was taken 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.
When the prisoners arrived at Kizel, they were beaten again, in what is known as the “reception” ritual, meted out to civilians and soldiers 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, even sit. They were forced to stand most of the time. No speaking was allowed, no gestures, no hands in pockets. Compliance was monitored through surveillance cameras, Semenov said.
Officers, members of the FSIN, concealed their identities with balaclavas and nicknames.
Public data indicates that the acting director of Sizo-3 in Kizel at the time Roshchyna was held there was Vitaly Spirin, who is 39 years old. When contacted by phone, Spirin hung up without responding to questions. The FSIN did not respond to a request for comment.
Last month, prison bosses at Taganrog were added to the EU sanctions list, after being identified by 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.”
It seems Roshchyna survived for only eight days at Kizel. Russia has never provided a death certificate to her family, but the autopsy found she suffered violence at the very end: bruises on her neck and a fracture of her hyoid bone indicated trauma usually caused by strangulation.
Some weeks ago, the Ukrainian news site Slidstvo.Info said it had obtained information from closed Russian databases about her death certificate. It was reportedly issued by the Leninsky department of civil status records of the Perm city administration. The date of death recorded in this document is 19 September 2024.
Ukrainian prosecutors have confirmed they believe Roshchyna died while in detention at Kizel.
