Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been detained and incarcerated in Russia’s vast and brutal prison network.
Many disappear, with only a few re-emerging as part of prisoner swaps or at televised trials before a Russian court, with their desperate families denied any information of their condition or whereabouts.
Some will never make it out alive.
Who was Viktoriia Roshchyna and what happened to her?
Known to her family as Vika, Viktoriia was born in 1996 and raised in the town of Kryvyi, just 30 miles from where Russia advanced into southern Ukraine in 2022.
She was, according to her colleagues, an obsessive and uncompromising journalist, conducting her reporting with astonishing bravery. She had “no life” outside work, regularly vanishing for weeks at a time, re-emerging to file stories exposing human rights violations being committed by the Russian state as it waged war on her country.
Manisha says that on what would end up being her last assignment, Viktoriia travelled to Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia in August 2023 to investigate the existence of “black sites”; basements or industrial buildings used by Russian security operatives (FSB) to torture and interrogate civilians.
“She was still so young but by this stage of the war she seemed to be the only Ukrainian journalist who was crossing the frontline into Russian-occupied territory to investigate what was happening to the civilian population there,” says Manisha.
Viktoriia was spotted and arrested by police and kept at a local police station before being moved 80 miles south to a FSB detention centre in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol. Here, according to testimony from Viktoriia’s cellmate, she was exposed to extreme violence and tortured. She was then moved again, taken by Jeep to the notorious Taganrog prison inside Russia.
“Viktoriia was moved deeper into the prison system with her family given no information of her whereabouts,” says Manisha. “And through this investigation we found that this is a pattern. Ukrainian civilians arrested by the Russian authorities then moved out of occupied Ukraine into sites in Russia where they effectively disappear, making it harder and harder for their families to track them or to get them any kind of help or support.”
The investigation found that the Taganrog prison was catastrophic for an already traumatised and weak Viktoriia. Her weight plummeted and her mental health completely collapsed. One witness said that Viktoriia was barely able to stand and would lie “curled up foetal on the floor” behind a curtain that screened the toilet, out of sight of the guards.
For over a year, she was held in Russian detention without charge and with no access to a lawyer. During her incarceration, her only known contact with the outside world was a four-minute phone call to her parents.
After she did not appear as part of the prisoner swap, weeks passed before her family were told that she had died in Russian custody.
When their daughter’s body was eventually returned, it was in such bad condition that visual identification was difficult.
While the exact nature of her death may never be determined, Manisha says preliminary forensics carried out by the Ukrainian authorities suggest numerous signs of torture and their evidence suggests it is “highly unlikely” that she died of natural causes.
Despite her body being identified, Viktoriia’s father still refuses to accept she is gone, “which is one of the most heartbreaking parts of this story,” says Manisha. “His grief just won’t allow him to accept it.”
What did the Viktoriia files reveal about Russia’s secret detention centres?
Manisha says that one of the reasons she wanted to investigate this story was to try to continue Viktoriia’s work.
“We wanted to show that just because a journalist dies it doesn’t mean the investigation will go away,” she says. “So we picked up where she left off, looking at the dark sites that were holding thousands of Ukrainian civilians.”
They talked to dozens of former inmates, ex-prison guards, lawyers, prosecutors and other sources. Manisha and other journalists did in-depth interviews with former detainees of Taganrog prison to map out the inside of the prison and heard detailed accounts of the horrors that went on inside its walls.
The Ukrainian authorities say they believe up to 16,000 civilians – including aid workers, journalists, business owners and church leaders – are being held in up to 180 separate Russian detention sites.
The team behind the project identified the systematic use of torture – including waterboarding, mock executions and being beaten with hammers – at 29 of these sites; 18 in Russia and 11 in Russian-occupied territories.
“Throughout the investigation we recorded 695 different types of torture being used,” says Manisha. “This is not a few guards who have gone rogue, it is hard-wired into the Russian prison system, systematic and deliberate, with nobody being held accountable for what happens and with guards even being encouraged to carry out torture on inmates.”
Why is this story so important now?
As the United States increases pressure on the Russians and Ukrainians to agree to conditions of a peace deal, Manisha says the thousands of civilians languishing in Russian prisons are being forgotten.
“We are talking about 16,000 people who are being exposed to the most horrific treatment and held illegally without charge and they have been barely mentioned in the ongoing peace talks,” she said.
“What we found is extremely relevant when it comes to the conversations happening at the highest levels, because if Ukraine cedes territory to Russia, what we found happening at these sites could be the fate awaiting Ukrainian citizens who will be left behind.”
What she hopes is that by shining a light into the darkness of the Russian prison system, “we have tried to help the thousands of families who have lost their loved ones and have put on record the appalling crimes happening to civilians at these sites,” she says.
Viktoriia was “just one person but her story is so important,” says Manisha. “It’s a story about impunity, about press freedom and war crimes against civilians. It was a very tough story to work on, especially for our Ukrainian colleagues, and by the end we were all dreaming about detention centres at night.”
“But all the way through we understood why Viktoriia was doing the work she was doing before she died and why so much effort has been taken by the Russian authorities to try to cover up what is happening to so many people in these dark sites.”
The Viktoriia project will continue publishing stories on the Guardian website this week.
