Index relies entirely on the support of donors and readers to do its work.
Help us keep amplifying censored voices today.
Index on Censorship, the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) and partner organizations today mourn the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died in unclear circumstances while in Russian detention, and whose death was confirmed by Russian and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday. We welcome the opening of an investigation by Ukrainian authorities on grounds of “war crime combined with premeditated murder” and demand that Russian authorities do the same to elucidate the circumstances of Roshchyna’s death and bring to justice all those who could be responsible.
Roshchyna, a freelance journalist with Ukrainska Pravda, a major Ukrainian publication, and several other leading Ukrainian outlets, left Kyiv in late July 2023 with the intention to reach Russian-occupied territory in southeastern Ukraine. Soon after her departure, she went missing, with many of her colleagues expressing their fear that she was most likely being held by Russian forces.
In May 2024, nearly a year after her departure, Roshchyna’s family reported that Russian authorities had confirmed to them that the journalist was being held in Russian custody. However, the charges against her, as well as the place of her detention remained unknown.
Following the announcement of her death, reports emerged suggesting that Roshchyna had spent the past four months in an individual prison cell in the Russian city of Taganrog, which is located immediately next to the Ukrainian border. Prior to this, it has been reported that she was held in pre-trial detention by Russian forces in Berdyansk, a city in southeastern Ukraine currently under Russian occupation.
According to Russian authorities, Roshchyna died on September 19. Unconfirmed reports by Ukrainian media suggest that she passed away while being transported from Taganrog to Moscow. According to the same reports, Russia was preparing to include Roshchyna into a prisoner exchange with Ukraine.
While it is unclear what location the journalist managed to reach as part of the reporting trip she began in late July 2023, it was known that she planned to report from regions of Ukraine under Russian occupation.
“Victoria was herself from the Zaporizhia region,” Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva told IPI in October 2023, when Roshchyna’s disappearance was first made public. “She saw it as her mission to tell the stories of the people under occupation and when fears grew that the Russian military may be planning to blow up the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, she wanted to go.”
Roshchyna was one of the very few Ukrainian journalists to travel to Russian-occupied territories to cover the impact of the war. In March 2022, she was taken captive by Russian forces while reporting near Mariupol, when the city was under a prolonged siege by Russian forces. She was released ten days later and continued working as a journalist from Kyiv. She documented her experiences in captivity here.
MFRR partners, Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterate their support of journalists who continue to report on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We mourn the death of yet another journalist who lost her life while attempting to cover the consequences of this brutal invasion, and demand justice for her and other deceased colleagues.
Signed:
International Press Institute (IPI)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Index on Censorship
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
ARTICLE 19 Europe
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
This article was first published on 5 April 2022 and is being republished following confirmation of her death in Russian custody.
I was in Zaporizhzhia on the morning of 12 March. I wanted to get to Mariupol to write an article; I thought that I had to tell the truth from the blocked city. It was my initiative.
I found out that a humanitarian convoy was going to Mariupol. I went to the assembly point but the convoy had already left. I contacted the authorities and asked them if I could catch it up. They replied that I could try. I did not find a personal driver, so I left with another convoy heading to Polohy. We caught up the Mariupol convoy near Vasylivka, and I continued with them.
I came across the occupiers’ first checkpoint in Vasylivka. Russian soldiers thoroughly checked me. They made me unzip my coat and show the contents of my bag. They found a camera and asked if I was a journalist. I confirmed this. They told me that I had no business in Mariupol and that I should return to Zaporizhzhia. They inspected my phone and camera and found nothing. I asked permission to continue with the column. The occupiers did not mind. We stopped overnight in Berdyansk.
We continued our way in the morning but we were stopped near the city limits and we were told to wait for permission. We were waiting for two or three hours by a crossroads where the roads to Mangush, Energodar and Vasylivka go. Rumours started to spread that we wouldn’t be allowed to move.
Cars passed by and a woman from the convoy told us that she had found some local guys who were willing to drive us to Mariupol. When we arrived at the agreed place, the car was no longer there. The Russian military told us to wait and started talking with us.
I stepped aside. I was thinking of returning to the convoy but a Russian soldier approached me and asked me to show him my phone. He told me that he had instructions from above to check me.
He asked if I was a journalist. I did not lie as it could make things even worse. He asked to show him my WhatsApp account and he saw the contact of the security services of Zaporizhzhia. There was a message with a request to publish a video of a Russian soldier who had swapped sides to join Ukraine.
Some other soldiers began to interrogate me. Then they spoke with Metropolitan Luka [a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church]. Luka and other clerics were leading the convoy. When they returned, they said I had to go with them. I was put into a prison van accompanied by four Chechen paramilitaries who took me to the Berdyansk district administration office.
I was met by people dressed in black and wearing balaclavas. They seemed to be very young, less than 30 years old. They started to interrogate me, searching me and inspecting my phone and documents. They told me that I was not a journalist but a spy and a propagandist which I denied. It lasted for an hour. Then, one of them said: “Everything is clear with you”. I realised later they were from the Russian security services, the FSB.
One of the men in balaclavas brought in his commander. When I asked him who he was, he replied: “I am the man. You have two options: you either go to a jail for women or to a Dagestani military base.” I asked them what that meant. They did not explain. Then two men grabbed me, put a blindfold over my eyes and took me out of the room. I was crying, explaining that I was a journalist, that people would be looking for me, and that they would not get away with it. They took me to the local office of the SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service.
I was met by Chechens and Dagestanis who put me in a tiny room with a chair, a table and a window which they closed and told me not to approach it. They brought a blanket on which I slept on the floor. It was light and warm there. I was taken out only to the bathroom. Almost all my stuff was taken. When I asked when they would let me go, they answered, “When Kyiv is taken”. They added “Luka is in charge of the convoy and he refused to take you”.
From time to time, I was interrogated by Russian occupiers.
“We have no conscience. The law does not exist for us,” the FSB guys said. “Ukraine does not exist anymore.”
They repeated this every day.
“If we bury you somewhere here, no one will ever find out. You will be lost forever,” they said.
I had no fear. I knew they were trying to break me. But I felt desperate because I knew nothing about the outside world, and I was not able to do my job.
“We do not fucking care that you are a woman and a journalist,” they shouted.
But I knew the fact that I was a journalist restrained them.
At some point Chechens joined in with the daily moral pressure of the FSB guys. They guarded me and tried to convince me to cooperate.
“They are serious. They won’t let you go for nothing. You’d better to cooperate with them because you are so young. Otherwise, you will stay here forever,” they said.
They added: “We are the power. They are the brains.”
They brought me some food, but I refused. The first days I ate my remaining supplies from Zaporizhzhia. When it was finished, I took nothing but sweet tea. I felt my energy leave me. It was difficult just to get on my feet. During the last visit of the FSB men, I was not able to stand. But I continued to demand my release. When I cried too loud, one of the Chechens hit me and told me that I wasn’t at home, and I should watch my tone.
There were a few empathetic men among them, nevertheless. They came to ask if I was OK, asked me to eat something and begged me not to kill myself.
I asked to be allowed to make a call. They refused. Afterwards, the FSB told me that there would be a neutral interview and then I would be released. I insisted that I wouldn’t lie. They agreed. They brought a camera after a while. They had a prepared text with them, and they demanded I read it. I did not agree with the wording “high probability of having saved her life”. Eventually I agreed to shoot the video and they dropped the previous demands regarding full support of Russian actions and accusations against Ukraine.
Once the video was completed, they took me to another place. It was the local jail in Berdyansk. They refused to return my phone and camera as they considered them “propaganda tools”.
I spent the night in a room with a Russian soldier, who was supposed to guard me. The electricity and heating were cut off during the night. It was very cold. With my flashlight I counted the hours until morning. The soldier told me that the people who had interrogated me were from FSB. He was afraid that I would kill him during the night. He asked me whether I considered them as occupiers. Then he put the Ukrainian flag and the national emblem near me and said: “This is to calm you down. You see, we did not destroy them.”
In the morning, they blindfolded me again. Then they took me out of the jail and showed me the direction to go. I reached the closest bus station and went to the location of an evacuation convoy. I left with them the next day to territory controlled by Ukraine.
I am sincerely grateful to everyone who put in their efforts to find me and release me.
This account was first published by independent Ukrainian news channel hromadske and is published here in English for the first time.
The Ukrainian government has confirmed the death of journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died during a prisoner swap in September. Free expression organisations, including Index on Censorship, are calling on Russia to disclose the circumstances in which the 27-year-old died.
According to Russian news outlet Mediazona, she died whilst being transferred from a prison in Taganrog, a city in the southwest of Russia near the Ukrainian border, to Moscow.
Petro Yatsenko, a Ukrainian government spokesperson for prisoner of war coordination, and Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on freedom of speech, yesterday confirmed Roshchyna’s death. Her father has been notified of her death by the Russian authorities, according to Yurchyshyn.
Roshchyna wrote from the front line for several Ukrainian media outlets before she was seized by Russian forces in August 2023 whilst travelling to east Ukraine for a report. Her capture was confirmed by Russia in April 2024.
This was not the first time Roshchyna had been taken by the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. In April 2022, Index published a powerful piece about her experience of being arrested while travelling from Zaporizhzhia to Mariupol. It is an exemplary piece of level-headed reporting. But it contains some chilling detail, including the moment when a member of the FSB, the Russian secret service, tells her: “If we bury you somewhere here, no one will ever find out. You will be lost forever.”
Index on Censorship will ensure that the memory of Victoria Roshchyna will never be lost.
Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of Index on Censorship, said: “The death in custody of any journalist is always gut-wrenching but especially so when it is one we have published. Victoria Roshchyna was a talented young journalist with her life ahead of her. We are proud to count her as an Index writer.
“Her death is a great loss, one that has shaken the Index team. It is also a stark reminder of the threat that Putin’s regime poses to freedoms more generally and to media freedom specifically, which has only increased several years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We call for an immediate and thorough investigation into the cause of her death and for those responsible to be held accountable. And our thoughts go out to her family, friends and colleagues at this challenging time. May her memory be a blessing.”
The Summer 2024 issue of Index looks at how cinema is used as a tool to help shape the global political narrative by investigating who controls what we see on the screen and why they want us to see it. We highlight examples from around the world of states censoring films that show them in a bad light and pushing narratives that help them to scrub up their reputation, as well as lending a voice to those who use cinema as a form of dissent. This issue provides a global perspective, with stories ranging from India to Nigeria to the US. Altogether, it provides us with an insight into the starring role that cinema plays in the world politics, both as a tool for oppressive regimes looking to stifle free expression and the brave dissidents fighting back.
Lights, camera, (red)-action, by Sally Gimson: Index is going to the movies and exploring who determines what we see on screen
The Index, by Mark Stimpson: A glimpse at the world of free expression, including an election in Mozambique, an Iranian feminist podcaster and the 1960s TV show The Prisoner
Banned: school librarians shushed over LGBT+ books, by Katie Dancey-Downs: An unlikely new battleground emerges in the fight for free speech
We’re not banned, but…, by Simon James Green: Authors are being caught up in the anti-LGBT+ backlash
The red pill problem, by Anmol Irfan: A group of muslim influencers are creating a misogynistic subculture online
Postcards from Putin’s prison, by Alexandra Domenech: The Russian teenager running an anti-war campaign from behind bars
The science of persecution, by Zofeen T Ebrahim: Even in death, a Pakistani scientist continues to be vilified for his faith
Cinema against the state, by Zahra Hankir: Artists in Lebanon are finding creative ways to resist oppression
First they came for the Greens, by Alessio Perrone, Darren Loucaides and Sam Edwards: Climate change isn’t the only threat facing environmentalists in Germany
Undercover freedom fund, by Gabija Steponenaite: Belarusian dissidents have a new weapon: cryptocurrency
A phantom act, by Danson Kahyana: Uganda’s anti-pornography law is restricting women’s freedom - and their mini skirts
Don’t say ‘gay’, by Ugonna-Ora Owoh: Queer Ghanaians are coming under fire from new anti-LGBT+ laws
Money talks in Hollywood, by Karen Krizanovich: Out with the old and in with the new? Not on Hollywood’s watch
Strings attached, by JP O’Malley: Saudi Arabia’s booming film industry is the latest weapon in their soft power armoury
Filmmakers pull it out of the bag, by Shohini Chaudhuri: Iranian films are finding increasingly innovative ways to get around Islamic taboos
Edited out of existence, by Tilewa Kazeem: There’s no room for queer stories in Nollywood
Making movies to rule the world, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Author Erich Schwartzel describes how China’s imperfections are left on the cutting room floor
When the original is better than the remake, by Salil Tripathi: Can Bollywood escape from the Hindu nationalist narrative?
Selected screenings, by Maria Sorensen: The Russian filmmaker who is wanted by the Kremlin
A chronicle of censorship, by Martin Bright: A documentary on the Babyn Yar massacre faces an unlikely obstacle
Erdogan’s crucible by Kaya Genc: Election results bring renewed hope for Turkey’s imprisoned filmmakers
Race, royalty and religion - Malaysian cinema’s red lines, by Deborah Augustin: A behind the scenes look at a banned film in Malaysia
Join the exiled press club, by Can Dundar: A personalised insight into the challenges faced by journalists in exile
Freedoms lost in translation, by Banoo Zan: Supporting immigrant writers - one open mic poetry night at a time
Me Too’s two sides, by John Scott Lewinski: A lot has changed since the start of the #MeToo movement
We must keep holding the line, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When free speech is co-opted by extremists, tyrants are the only winners
It’s not normal, by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Toomaj Salehi’s life is at the mercy of the Iranian state, but they can’t kill his lyrics
No offence intended, by Kaya Genc: Warning: this short story may contain extremely inoffensive content
The unstilled voice of Gazan theatre, by Laura Silvia Battaglia: For some Palestinian actors, their characters’ lives have become a horrifying reality
Silent order, by Fujeena Abdul Kader, Upendar Gundala: The power of the church is being used to censor tales of India’s convents
Freedom of expression is the canary in the coalmine, by Mark Stimpson and Ruth Anderson: Our former CEO reflects on her four years spent at Index