1996–2024

Viktoriia Roshchyna

Journalist who died in captivity

Human rights defender

Few journalists dared to cross the front line. She did it at least four times, on her own initiative, with no editor sending her. Viktoriia Roshchyna reported on Ukrainian civilians held by russia. In 2023 she was captured herself, and she died in russian captivity at 27.

Key accomplishments

  • A reporter from the age of 16: hromadske, Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Svoboda, Ukrainian Radio
  • At least four trips into the occupied territories (2022–2023), reporting on filtration, illegal detentions and deported children
  • Courage in Journalism Award of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), 2022
  • Order of Freedom (posthumously, 2025); IPI-IMS World Press Freedom Hero (posthumously, 2025)
  • RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award and the Washington OXI Day Foundation’s OXI Courage Award (posthumously, 2026)

A reporter at sixteen

Viktoriia Roshchyna was born on 6 October 1996 in Kryvyi Rih. She took up journalism at school and was working as a reporter by 16. She wrote for hromadske, Ukrainska Pravda and Radio Svoboda, and worked for Ukrainian Radio. She covered the courts, including the Maidan trials and the case of Kateryna Handziuk, reported on the Ukrainian sailors russia held in Moscow, and made films about juvenile prisons and post-traumatic stress.

Four trips across the front line

After 24 February 2022 Viktoriia didn’t wait for assignments. By July 2023 she had travelled into the occupied territories at least four times. She reported from Melitopol, Berdiansk and Kherson, on filtration, the illegal detention of civilians, the siege of Mariupol, the staff of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the children russia had deported. In March 2022 russian forces seized her in Berdiansk and held her for about ten days. They let her go on 21 March, after making her record a video saying she had been treated well. Within months she was back in the occupied territories.

The last trip

In late July 2023 Viktoriia set off through Poland and Latvia into russia, to reach occupied Enerhodar from there. On 3 August she was last in touch with her family. Investigators later found that she was held without any charge in Enerhodar, then Melitopol, then a pre-trial detention centre in Taganrog. Russia admitted holding her only in the spring of 2024. In September 2024 she was expected in a prisoner exchange, but she wasn’t handed over. According to russia, Viktoriia Roshchyna died in captivity on 19 September 2024, at the age of 27. Her body was returned to Ukraine in February 2025, and prosecutors found signs of torture. On 8 August 2025 people said goodbye to her in Kyiv, on Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

The investigation others carried on

In April 2025, 45 journalists from 13 newsrooms around the world published the Viktoriia Project, an investigation into the Ukrainian civilians russia holds in secret in its prisons. They took up the story she never got to finish. That same year she was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom, and the International Press Institute named her a World Press Freedom Hero. In October 2026 two more international honours followed: the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award, shared with Ukrainian women journalists held by russia, and the Washington OXI Day Foundation’s OXI Courage Award, presented at Washington National Cathedral.

Why it matters today

Viktoriia Roshchyna went where almost no other journalist dared, so that the world would learn about the Ukrainians russia hides behind bars without trial. She showed that the truth about the occupation has a price, and she paid it with her life. But her work didn’t stop: dozens of journalists from many countries took up her investigation. Anyone who tells the truth about the war carries on what she began.