Female journalist who went to cover the war dies in Russian custody, 25 journalists still in captivity

Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina died in Russian captivity last month, Ukrainian authorities said this week. Ms. Roshchina went missing after a reporting trip to the Russian-occupied region in Ukraine in August last year. Only in April this year, more than several months later, when she had already been taken into custody, did Russian authorities inform the family about 27-year-old Roshchyna.

I have official documents from the Russian side, which confirm the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchina, who was in custody in Russia, said Ukraine's HR Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets in a statement cited by international media. Modifications made simultaneously, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office proclaimed the opening of a criminal investigation into her death as a war crime and premeditated murder.

As per Patrika, citing Petro Yatsenko, the spokesman of the Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, some 25 Ukrainian journalists were reportedly in custody in Russia, while several others were believed to be missing. The Ukrainian authorities have estimated that thousands of Ukrainians are being arbitrarily detained in Russia. According to Kyiv human rights commissioner Lubinets, 14,000 Ukrainian citizens were in Russian captivity. Some of the detainees have been in custody since the conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 and Russia annexed Crimea. According to Russian officials, Yatsenko said Roshchina died while being transferred from a prison facility where she was being held in the southern Russian city of Taganrog to Moscow.