In memory of Viktoria Roshchyna
Former hromadske journalist, 27-year-old Viktoria Roshchyna, died in Russian captivity. The Russian authorities claim that this happened during the transfer from Taganrog to Moscow.
Viktoria Roschyna worked for hromadske for more than five years. She was one of those journalists who do not wait for an editorial assignment. As soon as something was happening, Viktoria was already there. At rallies, skirmishes, sites of murders. She took on the most difficult challenges, loved law enforcement topics, attended high-profile and important court sessions. Time and geography were unimportant to her - at any moment, Viktoria was ready to go on a business trip even before she was told to go. She had no days off, holidays, or sick leave.
From 2017 to 2022, Viktoria conducted dozens of streams on hromadske - from outside government buildings and courtrooms, met national guardsman Vitaliy Markiv from captivity, political prisoners Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko, live on the air, shot films and wrote articles on various topics.
On February 23, 2022, Viktoria was in Shchastia, Luhansk Oblast. She went there on the eve of the full-scale invasion, because she understood that something was about to happen, so she travelled closer to the front line.
With the beginning of a full-scale war, Viktoria filmed videos and wrote articles from hot spots in the east and south of Ukraine. In the first two weeks, she managed to make a report from Hulyaipole, which was under constant fire at that time, and from Zaporizhzhia, which the Russians were approaching; to talk with the evacuated residents of Volnovakha and tell the world how the temporarily occupied Enerhodar lives.
Then Viktoria prepared pieces about the military operations in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts and planned to go to Mariupol to report what was really happening in the city, which was already encircled.
On March 16, we learned that she was detained by the Russians on the way to Mariupol and imprisoned in the colony of temporarily occupied Berdyansk. On March 21, she was released. Viktoria wrote the column "A week in the captivity of the occupiers. How I got out of the hands of the FSB, Kadyrovites and Dagestanis” about that experience. Immediately after her release, Viktoria still made a story about Mariupol, talking to the evacuated residents who were in Berdyansk at that time.
Later, she started working as a freelancer for various newsrooms in order to have more freedom in where she goes and what she covers. She visited the occupied territories and wrote reports from there.
On August 3, 2023, Vika went missing in the temporarily occupied territories. Only in May 2024, Russia confirmed for the first time that it was holding her captive.
On October 10, her death was reported. Petro Yatsenko, the spokesman of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said that Viktoria was being prepared for exchange, but "unfortunately, we failed to do it in time": "The fact that she was being transferred from Taganrog to Moscow was the stage of her preparation for release".
We were really looking forward to the day of Viktoria's release. But there will be neither a stream nor a happy return story.
However, hundreds of her articles remain. They meant a lot to her. They were her life and a part of her.
Correct, not punish
Shortly before the start of the full-scale war, in January 2022, Viktoria presented a film about teenage colonies.
In it, she explored how staying in such institutions affects young men. She communicated with convicted teenagers, those awaiting sentencing, and those who committed a repeat crime, as well as with colony workers, volunteers, and psychologists.
In addition, Viktoria worked on stories about a boy who was sentenced to six years for selling several grams of cannabis, and a teenager who was accused of attacking relatives with a knife.
PTSD. Changed state
In 2021, Viktoria made a film about how to psychologically return the military from the war, what (and is it enough) the state does for this. In the film, she told the stories of Oleksiy Belko, who "mined" the Kyiv bridge, Dmytro Balabukh, who stabbed a person at a bus stop, and Mykola Mykytenko, who set himself on fire on Independence Square in Kyiv. Viktoria tried to give an answer to the question of why soldiers return from war physically, but psychologically they fail to do so. Why is the war still with them?
"Behind closed doors." How the abortion scandal in a children’s home in Mykolaiv Oblast exposed the deeper problems of the system
Viktoria was the first journalist to deal with the history of a children’s home in Mykolaiv Oblast, where in 2021 one of the underage students was allegedly forced to have an abortion. Then the law enforcement officers opened a criminal case, the girl was sent to rehabilitation, and politicians and representatives of the children's commissioner took the situation under personal control.
However, the story did not end there. For many alumni and former employees of the children’s home, it became an occasion to openly talk about their pain. Most of the alumni, in conversation with Viktoria, compared this place to a prison: what happens behind the closed doors of the children’s home, few people know, so it is difficult even for the relevant authorities to control it.
“The Kerch Prisoners”: The Story of 24 Captured Ukrainian Sailors
In this film, Viktoria talked about 24 Ukrainian sailors who were captured by the Russians near the Kerch Strait on November 25, 2018. They were kept in Russian prisons for months, not recognized as prisoners of war, despite the obligation of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to immediately release the soldiers. Viktoria followed their story, communicated with the relatives of the sailors, was in Russian courts, spoke with lawyers, soldiers and the prisoners of war themselves and created a reconstruction of the events in the strait. We presented the film in August 2019, and already on September 7, Viktoria met sailors in Boryspil as they were released then as part of a large exchange.
Where did the Handziuk affair begin, or what is wrong with the Oleshky forest?
In the spring of 2018, a fire destroyed more than 600 hectares of the Oleshky forest in Kherson Oblast. At that time, Kherson's mayor's adviser, Kateryna Handziuk, stated that the forest is being burned in order to sell it later. In July 2018, Katya was attacked, and in November she died from her injuries. At the time, the prosecutor's office stated that the activist's words about setting fire to the forest were the probable cause of the crime against her.
All the time since the attack on Kateryna, Viktoria Roshchyna followed the development of this case, spoke with the victim's father and attended almost every court session.
Maidan
From the beginning to the end of her work at hromadske, Viktoria did not leave the topic of shootings on the Maidan. She made articles about the "Black Company" of Berkut , the kidnapping and torture of Maidan protesters Ihor Lutsenko and Yuriy Verbytskyi, as well as key verdicts in the Maidan cases.
All articles of Viktoria Roshchyna are available at the link.