A Ukrainian journalist who won praise for her coverage of the Russian invasion last year has been missing for two months, and her family and colleagues now fear she is in the hands of the Putin regime.
Freelance journalist Victoria Roshchyna was last heard from on August 3, when she was on a work trip in Russian-occupied territory, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) said on Wednesday.
“We are extremely concerned for their safety,” the IWMF statement said.
Roschyna’s family now fears that she is a “frozen” prisoner or detained in occupied territory without official status.
“For my daughter, journalism was the most important thing in her life, she was very devoted to her profession,” Roshchyna’s father, Vladimir Roshchyn, told The Daily Beast.
Roschyna, 26, has been on the front line of the Russian invasion since February 2022, the foundation explained. Her fearless reporting, which included two stints in Russian captivity in March 2022, earned her the 2022 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award.
“I asked her to slow down after her first captivity and told her: ‘Vika, I can pay your salary, but please don’t go to the front,’ but she was firm, unstoppable; she couldn’t stop covering the news. of this war in the occupied territories for its readers,” her father recalled.
Victoria Roshchyna, 26, has been missing since August 3.Facebook
Roshchyn left for Poland on July 27 and was expected to travel through Russia to reach the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine three days later, Roshchyn explained.
When the family finally contacted her on August 3, she said she passed days of border checks, but did not reveal her exact location.
Roschyna was eventually reported missing to Ukrainian authorities on August 12, The Daily Beast said.
His family filed an official disappearance case with the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine and the Ombudsman on September 21, the outlet added.
“The Ukrainian security service confirms to us that Victoria has been captured by Russia. Public officials tell us that there are many Ukrainian detainees ‘frozen’ in Russian prisons, and she could be among them,” Roshchyn lamented.
“We have many so-called ‘frozen’ cases of our citizens, who were detained in the occupied territories during the war but the Russian authorities did not register them in any prison,” said Yevgenia Kopalkyna, a lawyer at the Legal Advisory Group of Ukraine. The daily beast.
Victoria Roshchyna was captured by the Russian army twice in March 2022.Facebook
“Missing people can remain in these prisons for months without the help of defense lawyers, it is impossible to find them, unless someone who is released tells us that they have seen them.”
Russian human rights activist and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Svetlana Gannushkina told The Daily Beast that she requested an update on Roschyna from Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner.
“Unfortunately, I have not received any response yet,” Gannushkina told the outlet, noting that “the response may take more than a month” because “there are many requests.”
Roshchyna worked for the Hromdske media outlet and had no experience as a war correspondent when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, The Daily Beast said.
From the beginning, Roshchyna used his skills to provide exhaustive descriptions of life under siege, even as his hometown of Zaporizhzhia became one of the first victims of a near-constant artillery attack while the nearby Donetsk region was stripped bare.
Ukrainian military ride a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system near the front line in August.REUTERS
The work carries considerable risks: As of Wednesday, 17 media workers have been killed in Ukraine as a result of the conflict, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The first, freelander Iho Hudenko, died while on a mission near the front just two days after the invasion began.
Roschyna, however, was not intimidated by the danger.
Several times over the past 20 months, he responded to his editors’ concerns about his safety by insisting that “this is the most important story,” according to The Daily Beast.
She narrowly avoided disaster several times: On March 7, just weeks after the invasion, a Russian tank battalion fired on her car, the outlet reported. A week later, the Russian army detained her in Vasilivka.
He wrote about his escape from Hromadske captivity. In retaliation for reporting her, Russia’s FSB captured her for a second time on March 11.
According to Roshchyna, she was blindfolded, her equipment confiscated, and she spent several days in captivity in a camp in Berdyansk, where she was accused of being a Russian spy.
After being released, she returned to Zaporizhzhia, where she replaced her team and continued reporting on the conflict, The Daily Beast said.
“She is a brave journalist, she is committed to reporting on the most controversial issues, which require courage,” Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, told the media.
Victoria Roshchyna said she saw her work as a war reporter as a “professional duty.”
“She is not a spy, she is a real journalist; She is not indifferent to the fate of the people who remain in the occupied territories. For her it is important to tell her stories.
“I call on the Ukrainian authorities to do everything possible to find her and on the Russian authorities to immediately release journalist Victoria Roshchyna,” he insisted.
“That they made this public is really indicative of their desperation,” Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the IWMF, told the Washington Post of the decision by Roschyna’s colleagues to begin speaking out about her disappearance.
Making it public, explained Lees Muñoz, can be seen as a “provocation” on the part of the captors.
The reporter behind The Daily Beast article, Russian journalist Anna Nemtsova, who is also a friend and colleague of Roshchyna, told Lees Muñoz that “it’s time to raise hell and publish.”
“At least if she’s in the basement, they’ll stop torturing her,” he insisted.
When she won the IWMF award last year, Roschyna spoke briefly about her work reporting on war.
“I was never afraid to tell the truth,” he explained.
“People need to know the truth and the guilty must be held accountable. “I don’t consider it bravery but rather my professional duty.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn