Viktoriia Roshchyna, hailed by her editor as ‘the bravest journalist I’ve ever met’, died last year aged 27
Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work.
Roshchyna was reporting on Russia’s systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing.
On Friday, an Orthodox church service at the golden-domed St Michael’s Cathedral in central Kyiv was followed by speeches on Maidan, the city’s central square. Mourners included Roshchyna’s editors and journalistic colleagues, diplomats, MPs and members of the public who came to pay their respects. She was later buried at the Baikove cemetery.
Colleagues described Roshchyna as a passionate and driven journalist, who pursued her work with such an intensity that she was often difficult to manage. She 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.
