A colleague of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna holds a photograph of her during an event in honor of Viktoriia's memory at a makeshift memorial for fallen Ukrainian soldiers at Independence Square in Kyiv, on Oct. 11. Ms. Roshchyna disappeared in August last year after travelling to Russian-held east Ukraine on a reporting trip.ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna travelled to areas of her country occupied by Russian troops, determined to report on what was happening. Her editors begged her not to go.
The 27-year-old journalist disappeared in August last year while reporting from the occupied territories. Russia indicated nearly a year later that she was being held.
Reporters Without Borders said Ms. Roshchyna died on Sept. 19, shortly before she was expected to be released. Her family had received a letter from Russian authorities early October. Ukrainian officials said they are investigating, but her body has yet to be returned.
Her colleagues remember her as brave and determined and have called on the international community to act, calling her death “either the result of intentional murder or a consequence of the cruel treatment and violence she suffered while in Russian captivity.”
Days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, Ms. Roshchyna was in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.
Khrystyna Kotsira, the editor-in-chief of online news outlet Hromadske, where Ms. Roshchyna was a staff reporter for five years, said she told her to get out of there because the trains would soon stop running from that area.
Ms. Kotsira remembers Ms. Roshchyna telling her that she had to stay because there were no other journalists there. She agreed to return to Kyiv, but not for long. She said she had to go to Mariupol.
“We said no,” Ms. Kotsira said. “But she said, ‘No, I will do it.’”
First, though, she went to occupied Energodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located, and filed a story that included photos of Russian soldiers. Ms. Kotsira said she asked Ms. Roshchyna to let her know when she had left the city so she could safely publish her story. That evening, she said, Ms. Roshchyna called and gave her the all clear. Ms. Kotsira published the story with her name and photo. The next day, Ms. Roshchyna said she was still there and wanted to do more reporting.
Next she joined a humanitarian mission that was planning to go to Mariupol. But she didn’t make it. She was detained by Russian authorities for more than a week.
Ms. Kotsira said she and her colleagues worked hard to push for her release and, once she was freed, told her to return to Kyiv after she got some rest at a hotel. But soon after, Ms. Kotsira said, Ms. Roshchyna stopped answering her calls.
Then she received a story from her, filed from occupied Berdyansk.
Ms. Kotsira refused to publish the story and suggested she work as a freelancer instead. She said she understood Ms. Roshchyna’s commitment, but as an editor responsible for her safety, it made her work extremely difficult.
“We forbade her to go to the occupied territory … but she did not listen to anyone,” she said. “She was obviously a super brave person. … This is a person who had no fear at all.”
When she learned that Ms. Roshchyna had died, she asked herself if she was partly to blame, if she could have done things differently.
Before her death, Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said his office was working to bring her back and was making progress. She was to be moved from the Russian port city of Taganrog to Moscow, he said, adding that the place where she was held is dangerous – people are tortured there, and there is no medical care.
“We were on the way to freeing Viktoriia. And it’s very sad,” he said. “I know her. And it’s very significant and a great big loss for Ukrainian journalism and Ukrainian society. She was very brave.”
Sevgil Musaieva, the editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, said Ms. Roshchyna worked as a freelance journalist for her publication for more than a year.
She said she also assisted in freeing her from prison the first time she was captured in March, 2022. She too would only publish her articles after confirming that she had left the occupied area she was reporting from.
“She had kind of a specific vision – she wanted to cover occupied territories. It was her mission,” she said.
They had a lot of conversations, Ms. Musaieva added, about how she needed to stop going there because it was so dangerous.
“All the time she answered that she has to go because she’s the only one who can and we cannot forget about people in occupied territory,” she said, adding that it was impossible to stop her from doing her job, even when it was risky.
“Journalism is not a crime. And there’s only one reason Viktoriia went to the occupied territories: It’s her mission as a journalist.”