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RSF Says Russian Jailers Denied Care to Ukrainian Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna Before She Died

Fresh witness accounts sharpen a push for accountability in a case hobbled by a mutilated body.

Overview

  • Reporters Without Borders, citing prison witnesses in April 2026, says staff at SIZO No. 3 in Kizel withheld critical medical help from Roshchyna in her final days.
  • Witnesses describe her transfer from SIZO No. 2 in Taganrog as a four-day journey by train and van, saying she arrived emaciated, fainted, and refused food in protest of torture.
  • Roshchyna died on September 19, 2024, in the Kizel pretrial jail after more than 13 months in Russian custody that began with her August 2023 detention in occupied Ukraine.
  • Forbidden Stories reports that Russia returned her body to Ukraine missing the brain, larynx, and eyeballs with signs of torture, and prosecutors say the condition blocks a clear cause-of-death finding.
  • Ukrainian authorities have opened preliminary probes into the Kizel jail’s director Vyacheslav Perevozkin and the Taganrog jail chief, as RSF details routine beatings and icy, overcrowded cells for Ukrainian detainees.