Female Ukrainian journalist killed by Russia sent back marked as 'unnamed male'

An award-winning journalist from Ukraine who was kidnapped and killed by the was sent back to her home country without eyes or a brain in a body bag marked as an 'unnamed male', it has been revealed.

Viktoria Roshchyna’s brain, eyes, and larynx had been removed before her body was sent back to in February, two and a half years after she went missing in territories in August 2023. It is likely the body parts were removed in a bid to obscure the that she is most likely to have suffered, a report into her death has revealed. Her body had been labelled as an “unidentified male” and was handed over, during an exchange of 757 Ukrainian bodies.

The 27-year-old’s body was much smaller and lighter than the others, according to the report. The gruesome treatment of her body could have been done to hide how badly she was treated during her time in Russian captivity.

READ MORE:

READ MORE:

The head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office’s war crimes department, Yuriy Belousov, told news outlet Pravda, that her body still had signs of torture, including a broken rib, and possible evidence that she was given electric shocks. A bruise on her neck also pointed to possible strangulation, the report noted.

"The forensic examination revealed numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment on the victim's body, including abrasions and haemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on her feet," Belousov wrote. He added that the body had been returned "with signs of an autopsy that was performed before arrival in Ukraine" and missing certain organs.

Due to the mummified state of the body, the official cause of death is still undetermined the report said, and further tests will be carried out by the Ukrainian authorities. However, an unusual Russian marking 'SPAS', possibly meaning 'total arterial damage to the heart', was found on the Russian listing that could reflect a cause of death.

Forbidden Stories reported that the acronym "NM SPAS 757" was scrawled on the bag, translating to "Unnamed Male, Extensive Damage to the Coronary Artiers, [Body Number] 757." Despite the bodybag identifying her remains as an 'unnamed male', a tag was attached to Viktoria's shin bearing her first initials and surname.

Viktoria's dad has also requested additional foreign examers, prosecutors told Ukrainian outlet Hromadske. only confirmed that she had been detained in May 2024, nine months after she disappeared.

Viktoria had travelled to Zaporizhzhia, in Russia-occupied Ukraine, in the summer of 2023 to report on the treatment of Ukrainians in Russia's prisons there. What happened between her arrival and disappearance in August remains unclear, despite her family's desperate attempts to find out what happened to her.

She was taken to a brutal penal colony in Berdyansk, eastern Ukraine known as one of Russia’s harshest facilities, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights. She then spent time in a pre-trial detention centre in Taganrog, just over the border in Russia before dying during transportation to Moscow.

"Viktoria was the only reporter who covered the occupied territories. For her, it was a mission," her editor at Ukrainska, Sevgil Musaieva, said: "She was the bridge between Ukraine and those territories who provided this critical information about life [there]. After she disappeared, there is no coverage of what is happening."

Viktoria wrote for a number of Ukrainian outlets as well as Radio Free Europe. She was previously held by the Russians for 10 days in the early days of the war in March 2022, earning the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2022 Courage in Journalism Award.

When she returned from that trip in 2022, editors, colleagues and family all urged her to stop going to the occupied area - but she didn't. In July 2023, she prepared for another trip, which would be her last, with a clear vision in mind. Musaieva said: "We discussed the places where Ukrainians could be tortured, and she gave me her kind of vision of how she sees the topic. She wanted to find those places and the people involved."

A source living in the occupied zone who had met her twice in 2023 described Viktoria as "closed off" when she arrived for the last time. He said: "She didn't say much. I don't know what she was afraid of, maybe of being captured by video cameras or something."

Olga, another source, told Forbidden Stories that Viktoria had start compiling a list of FSB agents. The source, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said: "She was telling me about her experience in captivity, asking me everything, and I realised that she had a lot of information, her own database, about FSB agents."