Viktoriia Roshchyna, or “Vika” as her colleagues and family lovingly knew her, was 27 years old when she died in Russian captivity.
Symbol of Abuse
“Died” is a generous choice of words. All indications on her body evidenced a tortuous, brutal death at the hands of her captors. Her crime? She wrote about two 16-year-old boys murdered by Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine.
Viktoriia, a Ukrainian journalist, was buried in Kyiv on Saturday August 9, 2025, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her professional courage and the importance of her work.
Her death has become a stark symbol of Russia’s systemic abuse of Ukrainian civilians. Over 16,000 Ukrainian citizens in the eastern territories have been imprisoned or gone missing. That total does not include the more than 20,000 Ukrainian children estimated to have been kidnapped to Russia.
Journalists like Viktoriia risk their lives to write stories for the Western world to be informed of what Ukrainians are facing.
You probably didn’t read her writing or even hear of her death which is why we’re sharing her story with our REVwords readers.
Vika
Vika, as I’ll respectfully refer to her, began working as a journalist when she was a teenager, covering court decisions and crime. After the 2022 Russian invasion and occupation of Eastern Ukraine, she started to write about living in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and the Siege of Mariupol. She worked as a freelance journalist for Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Free Europe, and Hromadske.
She reported on Russia’s systematic policy of torture in occupied parts of Ukraine. before falling victim to it herself. At her funeral, colleagues described her as a passionate and driven journalist. She pursued her work with such an intensity that she was often difficult to manage. Vika refused to take no for an answer and insisted she had to see the situation in occupied territory for herself. Editors, reluctant to accept the risks of her self-commissioned assignments, also knew that her work was shining a unique light on one of the darkest and hardest-to-access aspects of Russia’s war.
The Bravest
“She is the bravest person, the bravest journalist, I have ever met in my life. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s a fact,” said Sevgil Musayeva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, one of the outlets for which Vika worked for.
“Viktoriia was a person who didn’t know the word ‘no’. Everyone explained that she shouldn’t go to occupied territory. No editors were ready to take responsibility for this, but she still understood that this was her mission, and did it,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an MP and the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on freedom of speech.
“She was genuine, and genuine people often burn with intensity, and with that fire they ignite everyone around them, but very often this passion costs them the most precious thing – their health and their life,” Yurchysyn added. 
Courage of Her Convictions
Vika was taken captive briefly in Russian-controlled territory in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion in spring 2022. She was subsequently released after appearing in a video thanking Russians for saving her life.
But Vika continued to cross the front line. She exposed the intimidation of workers keeping the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station running. She investigated the shooting of two 16-year-old boys who had dared to oppose the occupation.
On her last journey she was looking for the location of black sites, basements or industrial buildings where Russian security operatives systematically used torture to interrogate civilians or coerce them into false confessions. She was building a list of the FSB agents responsible. Her family reported her as missing on August 21, 2023, and officially filed a report on September 21st. Around April 22, 2024, her father received a letter dated April 17, 2024 from the Russian government which confirmed that they were holding his daughter in detention.
During her detention, her only known contact with the outside world was a four-minute phone call to her parents, a full year after she was taken. Vika was last seen alive on September 8, 2024. Her death was announced on October 10, 2024 by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. In a letter to her family, Russian officials said that she had died on September 19, 2024.
Trigger Warning
The following contains graphic details of Vika’s death.
Vika’s body was returned to Ukraine in February 2025 following DNA identification. Her body arrived in a batch of 757 bodies as part of exchange. It was marked as “unidentified male.” However, examination by forensic experts indicated the body was of a female. DNA analysis confirmed Vika’s identity. The body had signs of post-mortem dissection conducted in Russia and abrasions, bruises, a broken rib consistent with signs of torture and burns likely from electric shocks. Her hair, which she liked to wear long and tinted blonde at the tips, had been shaved.
The brain, both eyeballs, and part of the trachea were missing. Forensic experts interpreted these an attempt to obscure the cause of death, likely strangulation or suffocation. 
The Order of Freedom
In 2022, Vika had been given an award for courage by the International Women’s Media Foundation. She didn’t want to stop work to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles and so she sent a message.
“We have remained faithful to our mission, to convey the truth to the world, countering Russian propaganda,” she said. “Unfortunately, many journalists have died. I want to dedicate this award to them. After all, they died in the fight for the truth, trying to record Russian crimes. I thank them.”
Now Vika joins their ranks.
She was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in August.
She received it “for her unwavering belief that freedom will overcome everything,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. 
The accounts of those who have been released from detention (including military prisoners of war who are more often included in prisoner swaps) suggest that the vast majority are tortured and subjected to sexual violence.
Read more about Vika here.
This is another in s series of stories of war time Ukrainians. Read about Roma here.
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