The torture suffered by the journalist, before leaving her last breath while she was in Russian prisons, is brought to light by the newspaper.
The girl was only 27 years old, revealing in her work and a solid negotiating paper for the Russians, according to the report. He was arrested in Zaporizia in the summer of 2023 and held in Russia until the end.
Her body arrived in Kyiv, during the Exchanging February 14, with another 757 bodies. With the souvenir tables in hand, representatives of the Red Cross controlled their lists.
For each corpse wrapped in white plastic, the Russians had given a number, a name, a location, in some cases and the cause of death. At the bottom of the last page, there was a mysterious reference: “NM Spas 757”. It was an abbreviation, which was interpreted as a “unknown man” and “extensive damage to the coronary arteries”.
There were important instruments missing from the body – the description of the publication is tough. It is reported that the brain, the eyes and the larynx were missing, making it extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to identify the causes of death.
It would take weeks until officials were able to confirm what published yesterday, Tuesday (29/4), by the Guardian: the body did not belong to a soldier, not even a man, but to a woman.
It was the journalist Victoria Rostsina arrested in the summer of 2023 near the Zaporizia nuclear power plant. She made her fourth trip to reportage to the occupied territories, and maybe it was.
Victoria Roschina died after a year of booking.
Information on the conditions of her death is limited. Victoria Rostsina was held without charges and without access to a lawyer. During her detention, her only known contact with the outside world was a four -minute phone call to her parents, a whole year after her abduction.
The preliminary forensic examination shows “numerous signs of torture”, according to the prosecutor. Signs of burns on its legs of electric shock, scratches on the hips and head, and broken side. Her hair, which she liked to have long and blond at the edges, were shaved.
Sources near the official research also revealed that the hostile bone on her throat was broken. This is the type of damage that can be caused during strangulation. However, the exact cause of death may never be known.
Guardian reporters, in collaboration with their colleagues by other media, found testimonies firsthand to reconstitute the events that led to the arrest of Victoria Rostsina and the details of her treatment in her detention.
‘Excellent work’
Known to her family as Vika, Victoria Rostsina grew up in the shadow of the war. Her father was a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and was 17 years old when Russia annexed Crimea. She and her sister grew up in the same city as Ukraine President Volodimir Zelenski. Kyiv Rich, where her parents still live, was 30 miles from the Russian advance to southern Ukraine in 2022.
Her colleagues said she was obsessed with work and was not compromised. “She had no life other than her work. No friends, no partner. But he did a great job. It was a mission for her, “said Sevhil Musieva, editor -in -chief of Ukrainska Pravda. “It was one of the most brave journalists I met in my career.”
To protect its sources, Victoria Rostsina used many phones. He used systems to automatically destroy the messages he was sending. The same thing happened with her articles. The files were automatically deleted. She herself disappeared for weeks at a time, and reappeared to submit her reports.
The timing of her adventure
In March 2022, while reporting from the occupied city of Berdansk, he was confronted for the first time.
He was arrested by a soldier and handed over to agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), forced to record a propaganda video and released a few days later, after a public outcry.
When she returned home, her colleagues urged her to rest and seek treatment. Her mental state was fragile and very weak, she remembered her colleagues.
Despite her colleagues’ tips, the 27 -year -old journalist continued to cross the front line. He revealed the intimidation of the workers who maintained the Zaporizia nuclear power plant and investigated the shooting of two 16 -year -old boys who had dared to oppose the Occupation.
According to testimony, Victoria Rostsina on her latest trip was looking for the location of underground and industrial buildings where Russian security agents used torture and interrogate citizens or force them into false bonds.
Victoria Rostsina left Ukraine for the last time on July 25, 2023. at 2:09 pm of the same day, its phone was connected to a Polish mobile network. From Poland, he traveled via Lithuania and north to Latvia.
A photo of her passport and her entrance form suggests that she entered Russia from Latvia, in her name, through the border crossing Ludonka. The card says it was heading to the city of Melitoupoli. He traveled 1,600 miles south via Russia, passing through occupied Ukraine a few days later.
The days after her abduction
On August 3, just days after the start of her trip, her father, Volodimir Rostn, sounded an alarm after realizing that his daughter had stopped controlling her internet messages.
The information gathered by her father, along with the testimonies of three people held with the journalist in a prison in the Russian coastal city of Taganrog, show what happened next.
The testimonies
One of the witnesses was her detainee, who was released last September and filmed her testimony for the prosecutor. She asked not to be named to protect herself and her family.
Victoria Rostsina seems to have rented an apartment in Enemidar, the city with the dormitory next to the Zaporizia power plant. She paid in advance for three nights and, leaving behind her backpack, she went out to look for the sites where the torture took place.
The journalist told her detainee that she thought she had found a drone. A patrol arrived and was transported to the police station, a five -storey building covered with blue tiles, where the windows were reinforced with metal racks. It was held there for several days before 130 kilometers south of Melitoupoli.
“Melitoupolis are maintained temporary detention centers,” said a European intelligence official who knows the situation in the occupied territories. In a process known as filtration, the FSB chooses captives, depending on how valuable they consider to them. Victoria Rostsina is likely to have been considered a special case, given the information she gathered.
The prosecutor believes he was transferred to a site in Melitoupoli, known as a “garage”, and according to the deposition of her detainee, Rostsina later narrated how tortured there. Her body was full of bruises. “During the interrogations, they used electric shocks … They stabbed her sometimes – I saw them on her: in the hand for sure, and on the foot as well … fresh knife scar – forearm, soft tissue between the wrist and the elbow. A scar of about 3 cm, penetrated. He said that a guy called him Mal … He was brutal, unconscious.
“On her leg, over the heel – I saw this, a 5cm wound. He said, “I told them not to touch my leg … I begged them not to touch the wound.”
