The body a young Ukrainian journalist tortured to death by her Russian captors has been returned home with some of her body parts missing.
Victoria Roshchyna,27, went on a reporting trip to Russian held parts of Ukraine in August 2023, she was captured by Russian soldiers and was held incommunicado. According to Ukraine Prosecutors, she was subjected to torture in detention
Yuriy Belousov, who heads the war crimes department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, said that forensic examination found “numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment… including abrasions and hemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib and possible traces of electric shock.”
Belousov said that repeated DNA analyses confirmed the body belonged to Roshchyna, even though it reportedly arrived from Russia labeled as “an unidentified male.” He said the state of the body made it impossible to determine the cause of Roshchyna’s death but added that Ukraine was working with international forensic experts to get more answers.
Roshchyna’s colleagues at Ukrainska Pravda said her body was returned from Russia with missing organs. Citing members of the investigating team who handled her remains, they said the brain, eyeballs and part of the trachea, or windpipe, were missing, in what they said could have been an attempt by Russia to disguise the cause of death. With CNN reports
Victoria Roshchyna