Project "Victoria": The story of the captivity and torture endured by journalist Roshchina and thousands of Ukrainians imprisoned by Russia
Source: Ukrainska Pravda
Authors: Sevgil Musaeva, Nastya Gorpinchenko, Stas Kozlyuk
This text is part of the international Viktoriia Project, initiated by Forbidden Stories in collaboration with leading media outlets around the world.
Forbidden Stories is a Paris-based news organization that carries on the work of journalists who have been killed, imprisoned, or persecuted because of their professional activities.
After news of Viktoria Roshchina’s death broke on October 10, 2024, the editorial team immediately launched the “Viktoriia Project” to bring her critically important investigation to a conclusion.
Forbidden Stories set out to investigate the circumstances of the journalist’s captivity in Russia. It also continued her work on stories about Ukrainian “prisoners in limbo.” According to rough estimates, there are more than 16,000 civilians being held in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in the Russian Federation.
Over the course of six months, an in-depth analysis of documents, testimonies, and court records was conducted. Thirteen international media outlets joined the investigation, including Forbidden Stories, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, ZDF, Paper Trail Media, IStories, France 24, “Ukrainska Pravda,” and Der Standard.
Our team of 45 journalists conducted more than 50 interviews with survivors of Russian imprisonment who know the system from the inside:
48 former prisoners who shared horrific details of their detention, and their family members who recounted the fates of their loved ones;
4 former prison guards willing to testify about prison conditions and practices;
8 Russian human rights activists who provided expert commentary on human rights violations.
This international investigation not only restores the voice of journalist Viktoria Roshchina—it sheds light on one of the darkest chapters of the Russian-Ukrainian war, demanding justice and accountability for crimes committed against the civilian population.
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Vladimir Roshchin, a resident of Kryvyi Rih, has been waiting for more than a year and a half for his daughter to return from Russian captivity.
Viktoria Roshchina, our colleague and a freelancer for UP and several other Ukrainian publications, went missing in the occupied part of Ukraine in August 2023.
Since then, her father, along with lawyers, Ukrainian journalists, and human rights activists, has been trying to find out at least some information about her whereabouts and conditions of detention. It wasn’t until April 2024 that Russia officially confirmed that Viktoria was being held captive.
Volodymyr Roshchin received the next letter from the Russian side on October 10 of last year. In it, Viktoria’s family was informed that she had died. The Russian side provided no details or circumstances surrounding her death.
“It was a shock to me… It’s hard for me to talk about it. I didn’t expect this… Especially since we’d been talking about it and had already prepared to meet her, and then this happens!” Victoria’s father said in an interview with journalists from our project.
In February of this year, we met with Volodymyr in Kryvyi Rih, at a shopping center. This is where they used to meet with Viktoria when she stopped by the city where her parents live between business trips to the front lines.
“Not a single Russian agency has provided any information about what happened to Vika, where she’s being held, whether that letter can be trusted, and if so, where are the documents certifying her death and stating the cause of death,” he says. “All this time, my family has been supporting me; we pray for Vika and believe that everything will be all right.”
Volodymyr shows on his phone a letter he received on February 8 of this year from the Office of Tatyana Moskalkova, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation.
“We are not ignoring the issue of determining the whereabouts of V. V. Roshchina; we will inform you of our decision,” the document states.
On February 14, 2025—six days after Victoria’s father received this letter from the Russian ombudsman—Russia will hand over the bodies of 757 fallen defenders to the Ukrainian side.
Among them was body number 757, which was identified in the Russian documents as an “unidentified male” and bore a single mysterious mark: SPAS.
During the initial examination, forensic pathologists determined that the body was that of a woman. A DNA analysis conducted by investigators from the Office of the Prosecutor General revealed a 99% match with the DNA of journalist Viktoria Roshchina.
“Due to the condition of the body and its mummification, the forensic medical examination was unable to determine the cause of death,” Yuriy Belousov, head of the War Crimes Department at the Office of the Prosecutor General, told reporters.
The journalist’s parents have requested an additional examination, as they have doubts about the accuracy of the initial findings.
According to Belousov, numerous signs of torture and cruel treatment were found on the victim’s body, including abrasions and bruises on various parts of the body, as well as a broken rib. Experts also observed possible signs of electric shock.
“The bodily injuries were inflicted while she was still alive. Therefore, there is a high probability that she (Viktoria Roshchina—UP) was subjected to torture,” says Belousov.
The investigative team conducting the probe confirmed to our project that the body was brought to Ukraine with signs of an autopsy that had been performed in Russia. The “Victoria” project also learned from its sources in law enforcement agencies that some internal organs were missing. Specifically, the brain, eyeballs, and part of the trachea.
An international forensic pathologist we consulted believes that the absence of these organs could have been intended to conceal the fact that death resulted from strangulation or suffocation.
As we have learned, the abbreviation SPAS may refer to the “official cause of death” established by the Russian side, and literally means the following: total damage to the heart’s arteries (from Russian: summarne urazhenie arteriy sertsa).
The official investigation is ongoing. Perhaps it will shed light on the conditions of Victoria’s detention and allow us to identify the Russians involved in the torture of our colleague.
Together with colleagues from other international media outlets, we have been trying to establish the circumstances under which Viktoria was taken captive, in which prisons she was held, and for how long.
This is also a story about the hellish conditions and the ordeals that Ukrainian civilians must endure in Russian-occupied territories and in Russian captivity.
VICTORIA’S JOURNEY
During the full-scale invasion, Viktoria Roshchina made at least four trips to the occupied territories.
She considered it her mission and duty to report on the living conditions of Ukrainians under occupation. Viktoria continued to do so even after her first captivity, which began in March 2022 near Berdiansk. At that time, FSB officers held the journalist for 11 days and forced her to record a video in which she renounced any claims against the Russian side.
Even after her release, despite her colleagues’ pleas, Viktoria continued her work in the Russian-occupied territories. She reported on how the referendums were conducted in the occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol, and spent 14 days alongside Ukrainians at the Vasylivka crossing point, trying to reach Ukrainian-controlled territories.
“During the war, she came to our house one day and brought with her a dented helmet and body armor that weighed about 15 kilograms, I think, along with her personal belongings. And then she said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘Daughter, stay,’—this was after her first time in captivity. And she said, ‘I have to.’ Well, how could I stop her? Once she sets her mind on something, she’ll do it,” says Volodymyr Roshchyn.
We were able to determine that Viktoria set out on her journey to the occupied territories on July 24. On the night of the 25th, she crossed the border at the Uhryniv–Dolgobychiv checkpoint.
Her route then took her through Latvia to Russia via the Ludonka border checkpoint, from where she traveled to Russian-occupied Melitopol. There, the journalist planned to gather material about Ukrainians held captive in the occupiers’ prisons. Viktoria arrived in Melitopol on July 26. She last contacted her editors at UP on July 28, without specifying her exact location.
“As far as I know, Vika stopped in Energodar. She found an apartment there and was supposed to live there for a while. But then she went about her business. According to a witness (a woman who shared a cell with Viktoria—UP), a drone flew over her just before she was detained. After that, a car pulled up and took Vika into custody,” her father says.
Victoria’s cellmate in Taganrog said that in Energodar, she was held at the police station at 17 Budivelnykiv Avenue.
The Russians had set up a torture chamber at that location. We spoke with two people who were also held at this address in 2022 and 2023. Both were brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks.
Serhiy (name changed at the interviewee’s request) found himself with a bag over his head at the Energodar police station three times during his two years under occupation.
“This place was ‘run’ by FSB agents,” the man says. At least, that’s how they introduced themselves to him during their first meeting. At that time, Serhiy was accused of possessing weapons, to which he actually had no connection whatsoever. The next two times, he wasn’t even told the reasons for his detentions.
“They broke a rubber baton on me (a rubber baton, a special tool used by law enforcement and security personnel—UP). It was the first time I’d ever seen a rubber baton break. My ribs were broken. My head was split open by the butt of the baton. My teeth were knocked out. My whole back and arms were bruised. And the second time they took me away, they also used electric shocks. They called it “a call to Putin”: they’d clip a clothespin onto my ear and onto the little finger of my opposite hand—diagonally across—and shock me. I don’t even remember how I fell from the shock. The second time the shock hit, they had to drag me all the way from the corner of the room,” Serhiy says.
It’s likely that Viktoria Roshchina also endured this exact form of electric shock torture. Her cellmate recalls that the journalist described how they connected an electric current to her ears:
“I know they used electric shocks (to torture her—UP) more than once. She didn’t say how many times, but she said she was covered in bruises.”
In June 2023, Iryna Artyukhova, an employee of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was subjected to electric shock torture at the Energodar police station. The woman was abducted and brought to the torture chamber from the yard of her own dacha. Eight men arrived to “detain” her alone:
“They weren’t military personnel; they were dressed in civilian clothes, but they were wearing military body armor. They pinned me down and pulled my child’s sweater over my head so I couldn’t see them.”
Once at the station, it became clear that the Russians weren’t interested in Iryna, but in her husband—Serhiy Potinga, also an employee of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
He was volunteering, delivering humanitarian aid throughout Energodar to families with young children. Irina suspects this was the reason the Russians took an interest in him.
Although she wasn’t the primary target, on the day of her detention, she was beaten for a long time, and after the beating, they ostentatiously “took care” of her: they insisted that she eat and gave her ointment for her bruises.
“They poured water on me and applied an electric shock so it would hurt more through the water; they clipped clothespins onto my fingers, then hung them from my earlobes. They shocked me every time I said I didn’t know where my husband was. They beat me with batons, shoved a gun into my mouth, ruptured my eardrum—they were slapping it right next to my head. They struck me with the butt of a rifle on my collarbone, right in the same spot. Then, when I was already lying on the floor, they beat me with a cable. They said, “The Chechens are coming now; they’ll rape you—they love that sort of thing,” the woman recalls.
Sexual violence by the FSB is not uncommon. Civilians interviewed who survived captivity report that they were often threatened with rape or forced into same-sex acts.
Serhiy recalls that during his first encounter with FSB officers, he was forced to rape a friend who had collapsed from exhaustion after being beaten; when he refused, they continued beating both of them with even greater force.
Later, the same scenario repeated itself, but this time with a different man.
“Once, they threw a guy into my cell—about 16 or 17 years old at most. They ripped his pants off, threw him in, and shouted, ‘F**k him!’ I told them, ‘Are you guys out of your minds?’ And they said to me, ‘Come on, get to work, you f**ker.’ I refused. They beat both of us up and then took the boy away from me. It seems like they’re obsessed with this,” Serhiy says.
Both Serhiy and Iryna eventually managed to escape from occupied Energodar.
However, Iryna’s husband, whom the Russians eventually managed to track down, is currently being held captive in Taganrog. In March of this year, a Russian court sentenced Serhiy to 18 years in a penal colony on trumped-up charges.
TORTURE IN MELITOPOL
After several days at the Energodar police station, Viktoria was transported to occupied Melitopol. We were able to determine that Vika was most likely held “in the garages.”
This refers to an unofficial prison and torture chamber that the Russians set up after occupying the city.
It consists of several buildings located near the bus station, in the city’s industrial zone. Before the Russian invasion, several businesses were located here, including a grain elevator. And starting in the spring of 2022, the occupiers began bringing Ukrainian prisoners here.
We met with Vitaliy (name changed at his request) in Zaporizhzhia in April of this year.
He managed to escape from the occupied territory in the fall of 2022. However, before that, he spent several months in Russian captivity—specifically in the “garages” mentioned earlier. The Russians took him away in the morning, right from work: a Toyota RAV4 and a UAZ “Patriot” pulled up to the place where Vitaliy worked. They threw him to the floor, put a bag over his head, and immediately began beating him.
Most likely, they came for him because he had traveled several times to visit relatives in Zaporizhzhia and later returned to Melitopol.
After searching his home, they took him to some garages in the industrial zone. As soon as Vitaliy was led inside, he was ordered to stand facing the wall. There were four other people there with him. For the next five minutes, they beat him. The captives were forbidden from turning their heads or looking around to see what was happening. Eventually, the Russians left the captives alone.
“The other prisoners helped me wash the blood off. It turned out that there were people here who had been held for over 20 days. The garage wasn’t small: 10 by 5 meters, built of stone. There were two iron gates, and in the corner behind a plastic curtain was a bucket used as a toilet. Against the wall were chairs with folding seats. On the floor lay 3–4 old wooden doors covered with old blankets. In the center was an old sofa. “We slept on them,” Vitaliy describes his “cell.”
He adds: there were no windows there. The prisoners could only tell the time of day by the light filtering through the cracks in the metal gates.
Soon after, they came for Vitaliy again. They blindfolded him and took him to another room for interrogation. He doesn’t know how many people were present during the interrogation.
He says he heard only one voice. They laid him on the floor and tied his hands and feet. They began asking questions: whether he knew anyone from the SBU or the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and what his mission in Zaporizhzhia had been. Throughout the interrogation, they beat him—with their hands and feet. They attached wires to his body and electrocuted him. Vitaliy does not know how long this lasted. He remembers that after the torture, he could not walk on his own—the Russians literally carried him into the garage. And in the morning, they took him to a local temporary detention center (TDC), where he remained until September 2022.
The torture continued there as well. The Melitopol resident recalls that the guards at the detention center were not locals but Russian military personnel, presumably from several different units. The first group consisted of people who spoke Russian with a distinct Caucasian accent. Starting in August 2022, they were replaced by Russians who spoke without an accent.
The man continued to be interrogated, as he describes it, “skillfully, using physical force.” Loud music played in the detention center corridors from morning until night: everything from the Russian national anthem to songs by Gazmanov. Whenever someone was being tortured in the neighboring cells, they turned the music up even louder.
“In September, they put Maxim Ivanov in my cell. He had been beaten very, very badly. The Russians had arrested him before Independence Day: he and his girlfriend had been putting up flyers around the city. And one of the girls who was in a cell on that floor—that’s his girlfriend, Tatyana Beg. The other girl is Lyudmila, but I don’t know her full name,” Vitaliy recalls.
The Russians released him at the end of September, forcing him to sign a cooperation agreement with the Federal Security Service. A few days later, the man left Melitopol for Zaporizhzhia at his own risk.
Maksym Ivanov was also initially held in a “garage” near the local bus station.
“They beat me with everything: first my hands, then the butts of their assault rifles. When they took me out onto the street, I could feel them beating me with all kinds of wooden sticks and metal rebar. They pulled a bucket over my head. They started pounding on the bucket with something heavy—I could feel the pressure crushing everything. I was already screaming for them to give me a phone so I could call my parents to say goodbye. They said, ‘You’ll die like this, you bastard, and no one will ever know,’" Maxim recounts.
They held him in a 5-by-5-meter garage for four days. He slept there with four other men on plywood boards laid out on the floor. The beatings continued throughout this time. On the fifth day, Maksym Ivanov, along with Vitaliy, another captive held in the “garage,” was transferred to a local temporary detention center. It is located on the first floor of the Melitopol District Police Department at 83 Hetmanska Street.
Maxim spent most of his time at the detention center alone in his cell. It was emotionally difficult, he recalls, because he could often hear the screams of other detainees being tormented.
One day, Maxim was taken to an office where he was forced to write a letter to Vladimir Putin.
“I remember the opening line: ‘Moscow, the Kremlin, to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, from Maxim Petrovich Ivanov,’ stating that I refuse to accept Russian citizenship. I wrote the refusal, and they told me to wait—they’d come for me in the morning and let me go.”
The next day, he was told to get ready.
They drove him in Maksim’s car toward Vasylivka. The Russians ostentatiously read out on video that he was being deported and told him to head toward territory controlled by Ukraine.
TAGANROG AND THE HUNGER
STRIKE Our colleague Viktoria Roshchina remained in Melitopol until the end of 2023. In early 2024, she and several other captives were transferred to Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog.
Official confirmation that Viktoria was being held captive came from the Russians only in April 2024. However, they did not specify where exactly she was being held.
The journalist’s father contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross. They confirmed that Victoria was in captivity, but there was no access to her. The Russian side has not brought any official charges against her.
Human rights activists refer to such detainees as prisoners held incommunicado—because Russia detains them without formal charges, they are deprived of the ability to correspond with loved ones, they cannot have a lawyer, and most importantly—such a person cannot be “accounted for.”
“Russia’s official prison system itself does not know how many civilian hostages it holds, since the majority of people are detained in unofficial torture chambers without any record-keeping or reporting to official authorities. In this state of incommunicado, people held in torture chambers in the occupied territories or in Russia are effectively left to fend for themselves, completely unprotected from cruel treatment and torture, which not everyone can endure,” says human rights activist Lyudmila Yankina.
Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in the Russian city of Taganrog
Last May, one of the witnesses interviewed by journalists from our project confirmed that he had seen Viktoria at Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog. This place can be described as one of the most terrifying for Ukrainian captives. According to those who have been released, neither lawyers nor international organizations—such as the Red Cross or United Nations observers—were allowed into this detention center.
3D model of Taganrog Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, where Viktoria Roshchina and other civilian hostages
were held
Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
For example, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Alice Jill Edwards told our project in an interview that she had tried to gain access to prisons in the occupied territories of Ukraine and within the Russian Federation. However, the Russians refused her every time.
“I wrote many letters. The only response I received was that, according to them, visits to the occupied territories or to the Russian Federation to meet with prisoners of war are impossible. This is a rare occurrence among UN member states.
Many do not want the Special Rapporteur on Torture to show up on their doorstep. Once my visit is approved, I have the right to conduct unannounced visits anywhere within the territory. So this is a risky move for countries that have something to hide. But refusal is part of the torture machine, if you will,” Ms. Edwards said.
She also added that torture has become an institutionalized practice both within Russia and beyond its borders.
A room with a bathtub used for waterboarding, where, according to one detainee, she was submerged until she began convulsing
3D models of the Taganrog prison facilities were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Credit: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
We can learn about what happens behind the walls of Russian prisons from the accounts of those whom Ukraine has managed to repatriate.
Prisoners in Taganrog are isolated from the outside world—they are not allowed visits, care packages, or letters. And the methods of torture used by the Russians number in the dozens. These range from beating prisoners during the so-called “intake” (when Ukrainians are first brought to the detention center and thrown out of the police vans) to starvation and the screams of people being beaten in neighboring cells.
And Viktoria found herself in this place.
“A witness (who saw Viktoria in Taganrog) told me that they were fed rotten potatoes there. And for the first three months, the witness didn’t eat that food. Because it was impossible to eat it. But then she started eating anything and everything just to survive. Vika couldn’t eat it either. Due to malnutrition, she began to lose weight rapidly. The witness said that at some point, the guards forced Vika to eat,” Roshchina’s father said in an interview with journalists.
He speculates that Viktoria did this deliberately: to force the Russians to either release her or transfer her from the detention center to a hospital where she could receive medical care.
According to Vika’s cellmate, in the summer of 2024, the journalist was finally taken to a hospital because she had become so weak that she could barely walk on her own. Our colleague’s father found out that armed guards had been stationed outside Viktoria’s hospital room.
It is unknown exactly how she was treated or what diagnoses were made. But after several weeks in the hospital, Victoria was returned to the Taganrog pretrial detention center. This time, however, she was placed in a solitary confinement cell to keep her separate from the other detainees.
“A doctor came, examined her, and then she was hospitalized—it’s unclear where. She came back with an IV in her arm; they gave her an IV drip and forced her to eat,” says another witness at the Taganrog pretrial detention center whom our project was able to speak with.
Victoria’s father recalls that in August he spoke with his daughter on the phone. Representatives of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners asked him to persuade Victoria to end her hunger strike.
“I said, ‘Daughter, you have to eat; they promised to release you.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I’ll eat; I promise.’ Vika is the kind of person who, once she says something, will definitely do it,” Roshchina’s father told reporters.
From sources in the Main Intelligence Directorate and among Russian negotiators involved in exchanges of civilian and military prisoners, we know that Viktoria was supposed to be exchanged in September 2024. However, unfortunately, that never happened.
We were never able to find out exactly why. We know that on September 8, Roshchina was taken out of her cell and prepared for the long journey back to Ukraine. A prisoner in Taganrog, with whom we managed to speak, was one of the last people to see her alive.
“We asked a girl from the cell to help her get down. With her help, she got down. After that, a guard came and said that the journalist hadn’t been included in the prisoner exchange. He added, ‘She has only herself to blame for this,’” the witness told reporters.
Our sources in Ukrainian intelligence told us back in October of last year that Viktoria died during her transfer.
Viktoria Roshchina’s story is not an isolated one. Most of the Ukrainians in the Taganrog pretrial detention center are military personnel. However, the Russians are also holding some Ukrainian civilians there. Detention conditions are the same for both categories of prisoners.
Yelizaveta, a former soldier who was a civilian at the time of the full-scale invasion and who spent one year and eight months in various prisons in Russia, was also held in Taganrog.
She tried to leave the occupied Luhansk region, but the Russians stopped her at a checkpoint and sent her to a filtration camp, and from there to Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog. Allegedly because she did not admit to the Russians that she had served in the military.
During her “intake,” she was stripped and filmed from all angles, and then given clothing: a nightgown that looked like a floor rag, underwear with traces of its previous owners, pants several sizes too small, a huge hat, and a jacket.
“Get ready, we’ll show you all the joys of life,” the detention center staff declared.
An electric chair with restraints. A large number of Ukrainian prisoners
were subjected to electric shock torture. 3D models of the prison facilities in Taganrog were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
The woman was then led down a corridor: she was twisted so that she could see only her own feet. Along the way, she was beaten with sticks and metal rods, set upon by dogs, and some men shouted, “They brought another Ukrainian slut—we’re going to fuck her.”
Eventually, Yelyzaveta found herself in a cell: bars on the windows, three bunks. A thin mattress. No pillows, no sheets. A metal bench and a table were bolted to the floor. A toilet, a sink. Every time a special window in the door was opened to hand out food, the captive had to stand facing the wall in a goose-like posture, with her hands behind her back, and shout, “Good morning, Chief.”
“The food was awful. The bread was inedible; if you threw it at the wall, it would stick to it. It reeked of undercooked dough. If it was the first course, there was always curly hair and snot floating in it. At the bottom of the bowl—dirt or sand. Sometimes there were chopped, unwashed onions, unpeeled beets, chopped up along with their tops. Sometimes there were potatoes in the bowl—unpeeled, with sprouts. “They called this borscht,” the prisoner said, describing the food brought by the detention center staff.
There was no drinking water—only tap water. This water had a greenish tint and smelled like fish. There was no soap in the cell, only a small rag that the prisoners used to wash the dishes.
Bogdan, an “Azov” fighter who was captured by the Russians, ended up in Taganrog in September 2022 and spent about half a year there.
He was held in two sections of the detention center—the old one and the new one, which had been renovated. There were nine guard posts throughout the entire facility: each post covered 15–16 cells with prisoners.
Women were held at the last post. The sixth post housed a punishment cell: according to Bohdan, those accused of absurd crimes were sent there—for example, tank crews who, according to the Russians, had shelled the drama theater in Mariupol.
According to the former prisoner, there was very little food: 200–300 grams per person per day. The captive soldiers calculated that this amounted to 4.5 spoonfuls. For lunch, they might be given water with cabbage and some cabbage. For dinner—pasta or millet. Sometimes they were given fish mixed with entrails and bones.
Bogdan also recalls that civilians, particularly from the Kherson region, were being held in Taganrog. However, he did not specify the exact number of people.
A room with bars where detainees in handcuffs were suspended upside down in a fetal position for 10–15 minutes, during which time they were beaten or tortured with electric shocks
3D models of the prison facilities in Taganrog were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
Overall, the torture of both military and civilian prisoners in Russia and the occupied territories is systematic. Not just in Taganrog.
We can already say that the Russians were preparing to receive prisoners. And the torture was not the work of “grassroots groups” on the ground. It was part of state policy.
HOW THE SYSTEM PREPARED TO RECEIVE PRISONERS
Russia has a long history of using a repressive system to persecute pro-Ukrainian citizens.
In particular, since 2014, the occupying authorities have been persecuting people in Crimea, extracting confessions from them under torture.
One such example is the story of the “Sentsov group”—activists whom the Russians accused of planning terrorist attacks on the peninsula.
As a reminder, in the spring of 2014, the Russians detained Oleg Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Oleksiy Chirniy, and Hennadiy Afanasyev.
Afanasiev was tortured and forced to sign a confession stating that he was a member of a terrorist group. Afanasyev signed the confession, but during his trial in July 2015 in Rostov, he admitted that he had been tortured and that all his testimony was fabricated. Sentsov himself also reported being tortured.
After his release from captivity in 2019, Kolchenko told Ukrainian journalists that at the time of their arrest, the members of the so-called Sentsov group did not know each other very well.
Moreover, the individuals did not know each other’s full names, which, however, did not prevent Russian investigators from labeling them a terrorist organization. They continued to use this experience to persecute pro-Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories. Ultimately, as of the end of 2021, approximately 200 people were being held captive by Russia.
Another telling example of Russian torture is the now-famous secret prison in occupied Donetsk Oblast—“Izolyatsia.” The Russians seized this art space in June 2014 and turned it into a prison where they tortured Ukrainian citizens.
A courtyard for walks surrounded by barbed wire at “Izolyatsia”
in Donetsk Ukrainian activist Lyudmila Huseynova was taken captive by the Russians in 2019. Prior to that, she had worked at a poultry farm in Novoazovsk and cared for an orphanage in Primorsk. However, because of her pro-Ukrainian stance—which she made no secret of—the activist was captured and sent to “Izolyatsia,” where she was held for approximately 50 days.
Huseynova says that she simply does not remember some of the events that took place while she was in “Izolyatsia.” However, she does recall how she was fed.
“For some reason, they decided that I was on a hunger strike. And they forced me to eat on camera; they brought special meals: they had overcooked barley porridge, mixed with trash, dirt, possibly traces of mice, and stones,” Huseynova told us.
The situation at the Donetsk pretrial detention center was no better: the detainees were brought dirty, foul-smelling fish that had been boiled without being cleaned. The women held with Huseynova, who were the hungriest, would rinse this fish with water, mix it with bread, and—secretly, to avoid the guards—cook it in a metal bowl using a kettle, seasoning it with sunflower oil.
“Those with AIDS and tuberculosis had an advantage: once a week, they were brought a hard-boiled egg and, perhaps, 100 grams of cheese. It seemed strange to me, but many people dreamed of contracting tuberculosis just to get moved to another floor, where the food was better,” recalls Huseynova.
Ukrainian activist Lyudmila Huseynova
Our project partners managed to speak with several former inmates who had left Russian territory. On the condition of anonymity, they agreed to describe how Russia prepared its prisons to receive Ukrainian prisoners after the start of the full-scale invasion.
For example, a former officer from the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN, in Russian – FSIN) described how, in the spring of 2022, special police units began being sent out on “rotations.” At first, the man thought they were being sent to war. However, as it turned out, they were sent to torture prisoners.
“It wasn’t just military personnel—only a small percentage were soldiers. The rest were civilians. These were people who had been abducted, taken to Russia, and subjected to horrific treatment,” the Russian man said.
For example, one such unit, called “Zubr,” was sent to the city of Novozybkov in the Bryansk Oblast. This unit also underwent several rotations to various prisons within the Russian Federation. Our interviewee’s statements are corroborated by documents provided to us by Ukrainian intelligence.
These documents indicate that Russian FSIN special units were deployed to guard facilities where Ukrainian prisoners—both civilians and military personnel—were being held. They rotated on a regular basis: some of the prisoners interviewed as part of our project noted that these guards changed once a month.
Units with the same names could be found in several locations. For example, the “operations” of the “Grozny” unit (Chechen Republic, city of Grozny, commander—Apti Turaevich Azhiev) were documented not only in Taganrog, where Viktoria was held, but also at No. 2 in Borisoglebsk, Penal Colony No. 9 in Borisoglebsk, Penal Colony No. 12 in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Kamyshin, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Novozybkov, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Kineshma, and at Penal Colony No. 120 in Volnovakha, which is currently under occupation.
The “Grozny” unit from Chechnya “operated” in many penal colonies where Ukrainian prisoners
were held Members of this and other units were involved in the torture of Ukrainian and civilian prisoners. And according to a former FSIN officer, it appears that such special units were literally given this order.
“Before sending people from our unit on ‘rotation,’ General Igor Potapenko approached us. He gathered those who were going on the assignment. He ordered them to work diligently and harshly. The message was simple: ‘Do your job well—and no one will ask any questions,’ said the former FSIN officer.
Later, at a meeting with the commanders, the situation became clearer: the special units were told that in the prisons where they were headed, there would be no oversight whatsoever and no surveillance cameras.
Unit commanders were told outright: “Do whatever you want.” Our source recalls that a culture of impunity began to take hold. When the special forces returned from their missions, they didn’t understand why they were allowed to torture prisoners with electric shocks in the showers there, but were being told not to do the same thing back home, at their base. Some of the people who did not want to participate in this resigned.
Authors: Sevgil Musaeva, Nastya Gorpinchenko, Stas Kozlyuk
This text is part of the international Viktoriia Project, initiated by Forbidden Stories in collaboration with leading media outlets around the world.
Forbidden Stories is a Paris-based news organization that carries on the work of journalists who have been killed, imprisoned, or persecuted because of their professional activities.
After news of Viktoria Roshchina’s death broke on October 10, 2024, the editorial team immediately launched the “Viktoriia Project” to bring her critically important investigation to a conclusion.
Forbidden Stories set out to investigate the circumstances of the journalist’s captivity in Russia. It also continued her work on stories about Ukrainian “prisoners in limbo.” According to rough estimates, there are more than 16,000 civilians being held in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in the Russian Federation.
Over the course of six months, an in-depth analysis of documents, testimonies, and court records was conducted. Thirteen international media outlets joined the investigation, including Forbidden Stories, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, ZDF, Paper Trail Media, IStories, France 24, “Ukrainska Pravda,” and Der Standard.
Our team of 45 journalists conducted more than 50 interviews with survivors of Russian imprisonment who know the system from the inside:
48 former prisoners who shared horrific details of their detention, and their family members who recounted the fates of their loved ones;
4 former prison guards willing to testify about prison conditions and practices;
8 Russian human rights activists who provided expert commentary on human rights violations.
This international investigation not only restores the voice of journalist Viktoria Roshchina—it sheds light on one of the darkest chapters of the Russian-Ukrainian war, demanding justice and accountability for crimes committed against the civilian population.
#757
Vladimir Roshchin, a resident of Kryvyi Rih, has been waiting for more than a year and a half for his daughter to return from Russian captivity.
Viktoria Roshchina, our colleague and a freelancer for UP and several other Ukrainian publications, went missing in the occupied part of Ukraine in August 2023.
Since then, her father, along with lawyers, Ukrainian journalists, and human rights activists, has been trying to find out at least some information about her whereabouts and conditions of detention. It wasn’t until April 2024 that Russia officially confirmed that Viktoria was being held captive.
Volodymyr Roshchin received the next letter from the Russian side on October 10 of last year. In it, Viktoria’s family was informed that she had died. The Russian side provided no details or circumstances surrounding her death.
“It was a shock to me… It’s hard for me to talk about it. I didn’t expect this… Especially since we’d been talking about it and had already prepared to meet her, and then this happens!” Victoria’s father said in an interview with journalists from our project.
In February of this year, we met with Volodymyr in Kryvyi Rih, at a shopping center. This is where they used to meet with Viktoria when she stopped by the city where her parents live between business trips to the front lines.
“Not a single Russian agency has provided any information about what happened to Vika, where she’s being held, whether that letter can be trusted, and if so, where are the documents certifying her death and stating the cause of death,” he says. “All this time, my family has been supporting me; we pray for Vika and believe that everything will be all right.”
Volodymyr shows on his phone a letter he received on February 8 of this year from the Office of Tatyana Moskalkova, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation.
“We are not ignoring the issue of determining the whereabouts of V. V. Roshchina; we will inform you of our decision,” the document states.
On February 14, 2025—six days after Victoria’s father received this letter from the Russian ombudsman—Russia will hand over the bodies of 757 fallen defenders to the Ukrainian side.
Among them was body number 757, which was identified in the Russian documents as an “unidentified male” and bore a single mysterious mark: SPAS.
During the initial examination, forensic pathologists determined that the body was that of a woman. A DNA analysis conducted by investigators from the Office of the Prosecutor General revealed a 99% match with the DNA of journalist Viktoria Roshchina.
“Due to the condition of the body and its mummification, the forensic medical examination was unable to determine the cause of death,” Yuriy Belousov, head of the War Crimes Department at the Office of the Prosecutor General, told reporters.
The journalist’s parents have requested an additional examination, as they have doubts about the accuracy of the initial findings.
According to Belousov, numerous signs of torture and cruel treatment were found on the victim’s body, including abrasions and bruises on various parts of the body, as well as a broken rib. Experts also observed possible signs of electric shock.
“The bodily injuries were inflicted while she was still alive. Therefore, there is a high probability that she (Viktoria Roshchina—UP) was subjected to torture,” says Belousov.
The investigative team conducting the probe confirmed to our project that the body was brought to Ukraine with signs of an autopsy that had been performed in Russia. The “Victoria” project also learned from its sources in law enforcement agencies that some internal organs were missing. Specifically, the brain, eyeballs, and part of the trachea.
An international forensic pathologist we consulted believes that the absence of these organs could have been intended to conceal the fact that death resulted from strangulation or suffocation.
As we have learned, the abbreviation SPAS may refer to the “official cause of death” established by the Russian side, and literally means the following: total damage to the heart’s arteries (from Russian: summarne urazhenie arteriy sertsa).
The official investigation is ongoing. Perhaps it will shed light on the conditions of Victoria’s detention and allow us to identify the Russians involved in the torture of our colleague.
Together with colleagues from other international media outlets, we have been trying to establish the circumstances under which Viktoria was taken captive, in which prisons she was held, and for how long.
This is also a story about the hellish conditions and the ordeals that Ukrainian civilians must endure in Russian-occupied territories and in Russian captivity.
VICTORIA’S JOURNEY
During the full-scale invasion, Viktoria Roshchina made at least four trips to the occupied territories.
She considered it her mission and duty to report on the living conditions of Ukrainians under occupation. Viktoria continued to do so even after her first captivity, which began in March 2022 near Berdiansk. At that time, FSB officers held the journalist for 11 days and forced her to record a video in which she renounced any claims against the Russian side.
Even after her release, despite her colleagues’ pleas, Viktoria continued her work in the Russian-occupied territories. She reported on how the referendums were conducted in the occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol, and spent 14 days alongside Ukrainians at the Vasylivka crossing point, trying to reach Ukrainian-controlled territories.
“During the war, she came to our house one day and brought with her a dented helmet and body armor that weighed about 15 kilograms, I think, along with her personal belongings. And then she said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘Daughter, stay,’—this was after her first time in captivity. And she said, ‘I have to.’ Well, how could I stop her? Once she sets her mind on something, she’ll do it,” says Volodymyr Roshchyn.
We were able to determine that Viktoria set out on her journey to the occupied territories on July 24. On the night of the 25th, she crossed the border at the Uhryniv–Dolgobychiv checkpoint.
Her route then took her through Latvia to Russia via the Ludonka border checkpoint, from where she traveled to Russian-occupied Melitopol. There, the journalist planned to gather material about Ukrainians held captive in the occupiers’ prisons. Viktoria arrived in Melitopol on July 26. She last contacted her editors at UP on July 28, without specifying her exact location.
“As far as I know, Vika stopped in Energodar. She found an apartment there and was supposed to live there for a while. But then she went about her business. According to a witness (a woman who shared a cell with Viktoria—UP), a drone flew over her just before she was detained. After that, a car pulled up and took Vika into custody,” her father says.
Victoria’s cellmate in Taganrog said that in Energodar, she was held at the police station at 17 Budivelnykiv Avenue.
The Russians had set up a torture chamber at that location. We spoke with two people who were also held at this address in 2022 and 2023. Both were brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks.
Serhiy (name changed at the interviewee’s request) found himself with a bag over his head at the Energodar police station three times during his two years under occupation.
“This place was ‘run’ by FSB agents,” the man says. At least, that’s how they introduced themselves to him during their first meeting. At that time, Serhiy was accused of possessing weapons, to which he actually had no connection whatsoever. The next two times, he wasn’t even told the reasons for his detentions.
“They broke a rubber baton on me (a rubber baton, a special tool used by law enforcement and security personnel—UP). It was the first time I’d ever seen a rubber baton break. My ribs were broken. My head was split open by the butt of the baton. My teeth were knocked out. My whole back and arms were bruised. And the second time they took me away, they also used electric shocks. They called it “a call to Putin”: they’d clip a clothespin onto my ear and onto the little finger of my opposite hand—diagonally across—and shock me. I don’t even remember how I fell from the shock. The second time the shock hit, they had to drag me all the way from the corner of the room,” Serhiy says.
It’s likely that Viktoria Roshchina also endured this exact form of electric shock torture. Her cellmate recalls that the journalist described how they connected an electric current to her ears:
“I know they used electric shocks (to torture her—UP) more than once. She didn’t say how many times, but she said she was covered in bruises.”
In June 2023, Iryna Artyukhova, an employee of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was subjected to electric shock torture at the Energodar police station. The woman was abducted and brought to the torture chamber from the yard of her own dacha. Eight men arrived to “detain” her alone:
“They weren’t military personnel; they were dressed in civilian clothes, but they were wearing military body armor. They pinned me down and pulled my child’s sweater over my head so I couldn’t see them.”
Once at the station, it became clear that the Russians weren’t interested in Iryna, but in her husband—Serhiy Potinga, also an employee of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
He was volunteering, delivering humanitarian aid throughout Energodar to families with young children. Irina suspects this was the reason the Russians took an interest in him.
Although she wasn’t the primary target, on the day of her detention, she was beaten for a long time, and after the beating, they ostentatiously “took care” of her: they insisted that she eat and gave her ointment for her bruises.
“They poured water on me and applied an electric shock so it would hurt more through the water; they clipped clothespins onto my fingers, then hung them from my earlobes. They shocked me every time I said I didn’t know where my husband was. They beat me with batons, shoved a gun into my mouth, ruptured my eardrum—they were slapping it right next to my head. They struck me with the butt of a rifle on my collarbone, right in the same spot. Then, when I was already lying on the floor, they beat me with a cable. They said, “The Chechens are coming now; they’ll rape you—they love that sort of thing,” the woman recalls.
Sexual violence by the FSB is not uncommon. Civilians interviewed who survived captivity report that they were often threatened with rape or forced into same-sex acts.
Serhiy recalls that during his first encounter with FSB officers, he was forced to rape a friend who had collapsed from exhaustion after being beaten; when he refused, they continued beating both of them with even greater force.
Later, the same scenario repeated itself, but this time with a different man.
“Once, they threw a guy into my cell—about 16 or 17 years old at most. They ripped his pants off, threw him in, and shouted, ‘F**k him!’ I told them, ‘Are you guys out of your minds?’ And they said to me, ‘Come on, get to work, you f**ker.’ I refused. They beat both of us up and then took the boy away from me. It seems like they’re obsessed with this,” Serhiy says.
Both Serhiy and Iryna eventually managed to escape from occupied Energodar.
However, Iryna’s husband, whom the Russians eventually managed to track down, is currently being held captive in Taganrog. In March of this year, a Russian court sentenced Serhiy to 18 years in a penal colony on trumped-up charges.
TORTURE IN MELITOPOL
After several days at the Energodar police station, Viktoria was transported to occupied Melitopol. We were able to determine that Vika was most likely held “in the garages.”
This refers to an unofficial prison and torture chamber that the Russians set up after occupying the city.
It consists of several buildings located near the bus station, in the city’s industrial zone. Before the Russian invasion, several businesses were located here, including a grain elevator. And starting in the spring of 2022, the occupiers began bringing Ukrainian prisoners here.
We met with Vitaliy (name changed at his request) in Zaporizhzhia in April of this year.
He managed to escape from the occupied territory in the fall of 2022. However, before that, he spent several months in Russian captivity—specifically in the “garages” mentioned earlier. The Russians took him away in the morning, right from work: a Toyota RAV4 and a UAZ “Patriot” pulled up to the place where Vitaliy worked. They threw him to the floor, put a bag over his head, and immediately began beating him.
Most likely, they came for him because he had traveled several times to visit relatives in Zaporizhzhia and later returned to Melitopol.
After searching his home, they took him to some garages in the industrial zone. As soon as Vitaliy was led inside, he was ordered to stand facing the wall. There were four other people there with him. For the next five minutes, they beat him. The captives were forbidden from turning their heads or looking around to see what was happening. Eventually, the Russians left the captives alone.
“The other prisoners helped me wash the blood off. It turned out that there were people here who had been held for over 20 days. The garage wasn’t small: 10 by 5 meters, built of stone. There were two iron gates, and in the corner behind a plastic curtain was a bucket used as a toilet. Against the wall were chairs with folding seats. On the floor lay 3–4 old wooden doors covered with old blankets. In the center was an old sofa. “We slept on them,” Vitaliy describes his “cell.”
He adds: there were no windows there. The prisoners could only tell the time of day by the light filtering through the cracks in the metal gates.
Soon after, they came for Vitaliy again. They blindfolded him and took him to another room for interrogation. He doesn’t know how many people were present during the interrogation.
He says he heard only one voice. They laid him on the floor and tied his hands and feet. They began asking questions: whether he knew anyone from the SBU or the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and what his mission in Zaporizhzhia had been. Throughout the interrogation, they beat him—with their hands and feet. They attached wires to his body and electrocuted him. Vitaliy does not know how long this lasted. He remembers that after the torture, he could not walk on his own—the Russians literally carried him into the garage. And in the morning, they took him to a local temporary detention center (TDC), where he remained until September 2022.
The torture continued there as well. The Melitopol resident recalls that the guards at the detention center were not locals but Russian military personnel, presumably from several different units. The first group consisted of people who spoke Russian with a distinct Caucasian accent. Starting in August 2022, they were replaced by Russians who spoke without an accent.
The man continued to be interrogated, as he describes it, “skillfully, using physical force.” Loud music played in the detention center corridors from morning until night: everything from the Russian national anthem to songs by Gazmanov. Whenever someone was being tortured in the neighboring cells, they turned the music up even louder.
“In September, they put Maxim Ivanov in my cell. He had been beaten very, very badly. The Russians had arrested him before Independence Day: he and his girlfriend had been putting up flyers around the city. And one of the girls who was in a cell on that floor—that’s his girlfriend, Tatyana Beg. The other girl is Lyudmila, but I don’t know her full name,” Vitaliy recalls.
The Russians released him at the end of September, forcing him to sign a cooperation agreement with the Federal Security Service. A few days later, the man left Melitopol for Zaporizhzhia at his own risk.
Maksym Ivanov was also initially held in a “garage” near the local bus station.
“They beat me with everything: first my hands, then the butts of their assault rifles. When they took me out onto the street, I could feel them beating me with all kinds of wooden sticks and metal rebar. They pulled a bucket over my head. They started pounding on the bucket with something heavy—I could feel the pressure crushing everything. I was already screaming for them to give me a phone so I could call my parents to say goodbye. They said, ‘You’ll die like this, you bastard, and no one will ever know,’" Maxim recounts.
They held him in a 5-by-5-meter garage for four days. He slept there with four other men on plywood boards laid out on the floor. The beatings continued throughout this time. On the fifth day, Maksym Ivanov, along with Vitaliy, another captive held in the “garage,” was transferred to a local temporary detention center. It is located on the first floor of the Melitopol District Police Department at 83 Hetmanska Street.
Maxim spent most of his time at the detention center alone in his cell. It was emotionally difficult, he recalls, because he could often hear the screams of other detainees being tormented.
One day, Maxim was taken to an office where he was forced to write a letter to Vladimir Putin.
“I remember the opening line: ‘Moscow, the Kremlin, to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, from Maxim Petrovich Ivanov,’ stating that I refuse to accept Russian citizenship. I wrote the refusal, and they told me to wait—they’d come for me in the morning and let me go.”
The next day, he was told to get ready.
They drove him in Maksim’s car toward Vasylivka. The Russians ostentatiously read out on video that he was being deported and told him to head toward territory controlled by Ukraine.
TAGANROG AND THE HUNGER
STRIKE Our colleague Viktoria Roshchina remained in Melitopol until the end of 2023. In early 2024, she and several other captives were transferred to Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog.
Official confirmation that Viktoria was being held captive came from the Russians only in April 2024. However, they did not specify where exactly she was being held.
The journalist’s father contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross. They confirmed that Victoria was in captivity, but there was no access to her. The Russian side has not brought any official charges against her.
Human rights activists refer to such detainees as prisoners held incommunicado—because Russia detains them without formal charges, they are deprived of the ability to correspond with loved ones, they cannot have a lawyer, and most importantly—such a person cannot be “accounted for.”
“Russia’s official prison system itself does not know how many civilian hostages it holds, since the majority of people are detained in unofficial torture chambers without any record-keeping or reporting to official authorities. In this state of incommunicado, people held in torture chambers in the occupied territories or in Russia are effectively left to fend for themselves, completely unprotected from cruel treatment and torture, which not everyone can endure,” says human rights activist Lyudmila Yankina.
Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in the Russian city of Taganrog
Last May, one of the witnesses interviewed by journalists from our project confirmed that he had seen Viktoria at Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog. This place can be described as one of the most terrifying for Ukrainian captives. According to those who have been released, neither lawyers nor international organizations—such as the Red Cross or United Nations observers—were allowed into this detention center.
3D model of Taganrog Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, where Viktoria Roshchina and other civilian hostages
were held
Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
For example, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Alice Jill Edwards told our project in an interview that she had tried to gain access to prisons in the occupied territories of Ukraine and within the Russian Federation. However, the Russians refused her every time.
“I wrote many letters. The only response I received was that, according to them, visits to the occupied territories or to the Russian Federation to meet with prisoners of war are impossible. This is a rare occurrence among UN member states.
Many do not want the Special Rapporteur on Torture to show up on their doorstep. Once my visit is approved, I have the right to conduct unannounced visits anywhere within the territory. So this is a risky move for countries that have something to hide. But refusal is part of the torture machine, if you will,” Ms. Edwards said.
She also added that torture has become an institutionalized practice both within Russia and beyond its borders.
A room with a bathtub used for waterboarding, where, according to one detainee, she was submerged until she began convulsing
3D models of the Taganrog prison facilities were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Credit: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
We can learn about what happens behind the walls of Russian prisons from the accounts of those whom Ukraine has managed to repatriate.
Prisoners in Taganrog are isolated from the outside world—they are not allowed visits, care packages, or letters. And the methods of torture used by the Russians number in the dozens. These range from beating prisoners during the so-called “intake” (when Ukrainians are first brought to the detention center and thrown out of the police vans) to starvation and the screams of people being beaten in neighboring cells.
And Viktoria found herself in this place.
“A witness (who saw Viktoria in Taganrog) told me that they were fed rotten potatoes there. And for the first three months, the witness didn’t eat that food. Because it was impossible to eat it. But then she started eating anything and everything just to survive. Vika couldn’t eat it either. Due to malnutrition, she began to lose weight rapidly. The witness said that at some point, the guards forced Vika to eat,” Roshchina’s father said in an interview with journalists.
He speculates that Viktoria did this deliberately: to force the Russians to either release her or transfer her from the detention center to a hospital where she could receive medical care.
According to Vika’s cellmate, in the summer of 2024, the journalist was finally taken to a hospital because she had become so weak that she could barely walk on her own. Our colleague’s father found out that armed guards had been stationed outside Viktoria’s hospital room.
It is unknown exactly how she was treated or what diagnoses were made. But after several weeks in the hospital, Victoria was returned to the Taganrog pretrial detention center. This time, however, she was placed in a solitary confinement cell to keep her separate from the other detainees.
“A doctor came, examined her, and then she was hospitalized—it’s unclear where. She came back with an IV in her arm; they gave her an IV drip and forced her to eat,” says another witness at the Taganrog pretrial detention center whom our project was able to speak with.
Victoria’s father recalls that in August he spoke with his daughter on the phone. Representatives of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners asked him to persuade Victoria to end her hunger strike.
“I said, ‘Daughter, you have to eat; they promised to release you.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I’ll eat; I promise.’ Vika is the kind of person who, once she says something, will definitely do it,” Roshchina’s father told reporters.
From sources in the Main Intelligence Directorate and among Russian negotiators involved in exchanges of civilian and military prisoners, we know that Viktoria was supposed to be exchanged in September 2024. However, unfortunately, that never happened.
We were never able to find out exactly why. We know that on September 8, Roshchina was taken out of her cell and prepared for the long journey back to Ukraine. A prisoner in Taganrog, with whom we managed to speak, was one of the last people to see her alive.
“We asked a girl from the cell to help her get down. With her help, she got down. After that, a guard came and said that the journalist hadn’t been included in the prisoner exchange. He added, ‘She has only herself to blame for this,’” the witness told reporters.
Our sources in Ukrainian intelligence told us back in October of last year that Viktoria died during her transfer.
Viktoria Roshchina’s story is not an isolated one. Most of the Ukrainians in the Taganrog pretrial detention center are military personnel. However, the Russians are also holding some Ukrainian civilians there. Detention conditions are the same for both categories of prisoners.
Yelizaveta, a former soldier who was a civilian at the time of the full-scale invasion and who spent one year and eight months in various prisons in Russia, was also held in Taganrog.
She tried to leave the occupied Luhansk region, but the Russians stopped her at a checkpoint and sent her to a filtration camp, and from there to Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog. Allegedly because she did not admit to the Russians that she had served in the military.
During her “intake,” she was stripped and filmed from all angles, and then given clothing: a nightgown that looked like a floor rag, underwear with traces of its previous owners, pants several sizes too small, a huge hat, and a jacket.
“Get ready, we’ll show you all the joys of life,” the detention center staff declared.
An electric chair with restraints. A large number of Ukrainian prisoners
were subjected to electric shock torture. 3D models of the prison facilities in Taganrog were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
The woman was then led down a corridor: she was twisted so that she could see only her own feet. Along the way, she was beaten with sticks and metal rods, set upon by dogs, and some men shouted, “They brought another Ukrainian slut—we’re going to fuck her.”
Eventually, Yelyzaveta found herself in a cell: bars on the windows, three bunks. A thin mattress. No pillows, no sheets. A metal bench and a table were bolted to the floor. A toilet, a sink. Every time a special window in the door was opened to hand out food, the captive had to stand facing the wall in a goose-like posture, with her hands behind her back, and shout, “Good morning, Chief.”
“The food was awful. The bread was inedible; if you threw it at the wall, it would stick to it. It reeked of undercooked dough. If it was the first course, there was always curly hair and snot floating in it. At the bottom of the bowl—dirt or sand. Sometimes there were chopped, unwashed onions, unpeeled beets, chopped up along with their tops. Sometimes there were potatoes in the bowl—unpeeled, with sprouts. “They called this borscht,” the prisoner said, describing the food brought by the detention center staff.
There was no drinking water—only tap water. This water had a greenish tint and smelled like fish. There was no soap in the cell, only a small rag that the prisoners used to wash the dishes.
Bogdan, an “Azov” fighter who was captured by the Russians, ended up in Taganrog in September 2022 and spent about half a year there.
He was held in two sections of the detention center—the old one and the new one, which had been renovated. There were nine guard posts throughout the entire facility: each post covered 15–16 cells with prisoners.
Women were held at the last post. The sixth post housed a punishment cell: according to Bohdan, those accused of absurd crimes were sent there—for example, tank crews who, according to the Russians, had shelled the drama theater in Mariupol.
According to the former prisoner, there was very little food: 200–300 grams per person per day. The captive soldiers calculated that this amounted to 4.5 spoonfuls. For lunch, they might be given water with cabbage and some cabbage. For dinner—pasta or millet. Sometimes they were given fish mixed with entrails and bones.
Bogdan also recalls that civilians, particularly from the Kherson region, were being held in Taganrog. However, he did not specify the exact number of people.
A room with bars where detainees in handcuffs were suspended upside down in a fetal position for 10–15 minutes, during which time they were beaten or tortured with electric shocks
3D models of the prison facilities in Taganrog were recreated based on numerous interviews conducted by journalists as part of the investigation. Author: Washington Post \ Jarrett Ley
Overall, the torture of both military and civilian prisoners in Russia and the occupied territories is systematic. Not just in Taganrog.
We can already say that the Russians were preparing to receive prisoners. And the torture was not the work of “grassroots groups” on the ground. It was part of state policy.
HOW THE SYSTEM PREPARED TO RECEIVE PRISONERS
Russia has a long history of using a repressive system to persecute pro-Ukrainian citizens.
In particular, since 2014, the occupying authorities have been persecuting people in Crimea, extracting confessions from them under torture.
One such example is the story of the “Sentsov group”—activists whom the Russians accused of planning terrorist attacks on the peninsula.
As a reminder, in the spring of 2014, the Russians detained Oleg Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Oleksiy Chirniy, and Hennadiy Afanasyev.
Afanasiev was tortured and forced to sign a confession stating that he was a member of a terrorist group. Afanasyev signed the confession, but during his trial in July 2015 in Rostov, he admitted that he had been tortured and that all his testimony was fabricated. Sentsov himself also reported being tortured.
After his release from captivity in 2019, Kolchenko told Ukrainian journalists that at the time of their arrest, the members of the so-called Sentsov group did not know each other very well.
Moreover, the individuals did not know each other’s full names, which, however, did not prevent Russian investigators from labeling them a terrorist organization. They continued to use this experience to persecute pro-Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories. Ultimately, as of the end of 2021, approximately 200 people were being held captive by Russia.
Another telling example of Russian torture is the now-famous secret prison in occupied Donetsk Oblast—“Izolyatsia.” The Russians seized this art space in June 2014 and turned it into a prison where they tortured Ukrainian citizens.
A courtyard for walks surrounded by barbed wire at “Izolyatsia”
in Donetsk Ukrainian activist Lyudmila Huseynova was taken captive by the Russians in 2019. Prior to that, she had worked at a poultry farm in Novoazovsk and cared for an orphanage in Primorsk. However, because of her pro-Ukrainian stance—which she made no secret of—the activist was captured and sent to “Izolyatsia,” where she was held for approximately 50 days.
Huseynova says that she simply does not remember some of the events that took place while she was in “Izolyatsia.” However, she does recall how she was fed.
“For some reason, they decided that I was on a hunger strike. And they forced me to eat on camera; they brought special meals: they had overcooked barley porridge, mixed with trash, dirt, possibly traces of mice, and stones,” Huseynova told us.
The situation at the Donetsk pretrial detention center was no better: the detainees were brought dirty, foul-smelling fish that had been boiled without being cleaned. The women held with Huseynova, who were the hungriest, would rinse this fish with water, mix it with bread, and—secretly, to avoid the guards—cook it in a metal bowl using a kettle, seasoning it with sunflower oil.
“Those with AIDS and tuberculosis had an advantage: once a week, they were brought a hard-boiled egg and, perhaps, 100 grams of cheese. It seemed strange to me, but many people dreamed of contracting tuberculosis just to get moved to another floor, where the food was better,” recalls Huseynova.
Ukrainian activist Lyudmila Huseynova
Our project partners managed to speak with several former inmates who had left Russian territory. On the condition of anonymity, they agreed to describe how Russia prepared its prisons to receive Ukrainian prisoners after the start of the full-scale invasion.
For example, a former officer from the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN, in Russian – FSIN) described how, in the spring of 2022, special police units began being sent out on “rotations.” At first, the man thought they were being sent to war. However, as it turned out, they were sent to torture prisoners.
“It wasn’t just military personnel—only a small percentage were soldiers. The rest were civilians. These were people who had been abducted, taken to Russia, and subjected to horrific treatment,” the Russian man said.
For example, one such unit, called “Zubr,” was sent to the city of Novozybkov in the Bryansk Oblast. This unit also underwent several rotations to various prisons within the Russian Federation. Our interviewee’s statements are corroborated by documents provided to us by Ukrainian intelligence.
These documents indicate that Russian FSIN special units were deployed to guard facilities where Ukrainian prisoners—both civilians and military personnel—were being held. They rotated on a regular basis: some of the prisoners interviewed as part of our project noted that these guards changed once a month.
Units with the same names could be found in several locations. For example, the “operations” of the “Grozny” unit (Chechen Republic, city of Grozny, commander—Apti Turaevich Azhiev) were documented not only in Taganrog, where Viktoria was held, but also at No. 2 in Borisoglebsk, Penal Colony No. 9 in Borisoglebsk, Penal Colony No. 12 in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Kamyshin, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Novozybkov, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Kineshma, and at Penal Colony No. 120 in Volnovakha, which is currently under occupation.
The “Grozny” unit from Chechnya “operated” in many penal colonies where Ukrainian prisoners
were held Members of this and other units were involved in the torture of Ukrainian and civilian prisoners. And according to a former FSIN officer, it appears that such special units were literally given this order.
“Before sending people from our unit on ‘rotation,’ General Igor Potapenko approached us. He gathered those who were going on the assignment. He ordered them to work diligently and harshly. The message was simple: ‘Do your job well—and no one will ask any questions,’ said the former FSIN officer.
Later, at a meeting with the commanders, the situation became clearer: the special units were told that in the prisons where they were headed, there would be no oversight whatsoever and no surveillance cameras.
Unit commanders were told outright: “Do whatever you want.” Our source recalls that a culture of impunity began to take hold. When the special forces returned from their missions, they didn’t understand why they were allowed to torture prisoners with electric shocks in the showers there, but were being told not to do the same thing back home, at their base. Some of the people who did not want to participate in this resigned.
Another high-ranking official within the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) system stated that special units of the Penitentiary Service beat prisoners on the orders of supervisors from the Federal Security Service. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he explained that the interrogations were not organized by the FSIN’s Main Directorate, but by “colleagues” from another agency.
To oversee this work, employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s Main Directorate were sent to prisons holding Ukrainian prisoners—not only within the Russian Federation but also in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
“The primary goal was to obtain any operational data that could be used, first and foremost for military purposes. Information about facilities, training sites, the names of commanders, and the names of people who might have had connections. Even the names of civilians who might be of interest.
FSIN staff responsible for interacting with the prisoners had absolutely no idea what to do with them. They didn’t know how to proceed, and in many cases still don’t. That is why they resorted to torture.
“But in any case, overall command was exercised by the FSB—interrogating and monitoring prisoners of war is not a core function of the FSIN,” said the source.
He also added that the FSB is always present and monitors the actions of FSIN employees, operational units, and other personnel.
In fact, these statements are indirectly confirmed by some of the prisoners with whom we were able to speak. They mentioned people who looked different from ordinary Rosgvardia or FSIN employees and who directly offered to collaborate with the Russian Federation.
Furthermore, according to our source within the FSIN system, the FSB oversaw this work online, from Moscow. Those who worked in the Russian capital would occasionally travel to Lubyanka to receive new instructions.
“There was a lot of talk about this, especially during smoke breaks. You heard all kinds of things there: stories about prisoners, torture, even that ‘our guys cut off someone’s balls.’ Such conversations were a constant.” I believe that most of this wasn’t direct orders: it was the influence of propaganda, an atmosphere in which cruelty had become the norm,” says the interviewee.
If we analyze the data on the 29 pretrial detention centers and penal colonies for which we have confirmation of torture from at least two sources, we can say the following with certainty: prisoners were beaten in every single one of them. And in almost every one, detainees were tortured with electric shocks.
In approximately two-thirds of these prisons, there are documented cases of suffocation, sexual violence, torture by fire, and physical exhaustion in various forms. And this is only a fraction of the long list of torture methods devised by FSIN staff.
We know that our colleague Dmytro Khylyuk was set upon by service dogs at a penal colony in the village of Pakino in the Vladimir Region of the Russian Federation, and that he was also starved.
Journalist Dmytro Khilyuk has been held captive in Russia since March 2022.
Moreover, when an epidemic of scabies broke out among the prisoners, they were denied treatment. Prisoners were forced to sing the Russian national anthem and memorize Russian songs. Refusal resulted in beatings. Ukrainians were forced to burn off or scrape away their tattoos with stones.
In the same Pakin prison, prisoners were forbidden from sitting or lying on the bunks in their cells during the day: they were forced to stand all day, causing their legs to swell. Threats of rape and execution were common. In some prisons, prisoners died after being unable to endure such conditions: we know of dozens of such cases.
In Taganrog Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 alone, where our colleague Viktoria Roshchina was held, at least 15 Ukrainian citizens died as a result of torture and harsh detention conditions.
***
Unfortunately, the scope of this report—and indeed any other—does not allow us to describe each of these detention facilities.
As of April 2025, we are aware of 186 detention facilities where Ukrainian citizens are being held. Torture occurs regularly in at least 29 of them. This is confirmed by a UN report and a Ukrainian intelligence report, both of which our project has at its disposal. However, this is not an exhaustive list.
In the second part of our series, read about how Russia created a system of prisons designed to torture prisoners, and exactly who is involved in the torture of Ukrainians.
To oversee this work, employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s Main Directorate were sent to prisons holding Ukrainian prisoners—not only within the Russian Federation but also in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
“The primary goal was to obtain any operational data that could be used, first and foremost for military purposes. Information about facilities, training sites, the names of commanders, and the names of people who might have had connections. Even the names of civilians who might be of interest.
FSIN staff responsible for interacting with the prisoners had absolutely no idea what to do with them. They didn’t know how to proceed, and in many cases still don’t. That is why they resorted to torture.
“But in any case, overall command was exercised by the FSB—interrogating and monitoring prisoners of war is not a core function of the FSIN,” said the source.
He also added that the FSB is always present and monitors the actions of FSIN employees, operational units, and other personnel.
In fact, these statements are indirectly confirmed by some of the prisoners with whom we were able to speak. They mentioned people who looked different from ordinary Rosgvardia or FSIN employees and who directly offered to collaborate with the Russian Federation.
Furthermore, according to our source within the FSIN system, the FSB oversaw this work online, from Moscow. Those who worked in the Russian capital would occasionally travel to Lubyanka to receive new instructions.
“There was a lot of talk about this, especially during smoke breaks. You heard all kinds of things there: stories about prisoners, torture, even that ‘our guys cut off someone’s balls.’ Such conversations were a constant.” I believe that most of this wasn’t direct orders: it was the influence of propaganda, an atmosphere in which cruelty had become the norm,” says the interviewee.
If we analyze the data on the 29 pretrial detention centers and penal colonies for which we have confirmation of torture from at least two sources, we can say the following with certainty: prisoners were beaten in every single one of them. And in almost every one, detainees were tortured with electric shocks.
In approximately two-thirds of these prisons, there are documented cases of suffocation, sexual violence, torture by fire, and physical exhaustion in various forms. And this is only a fraction of the long list of torture methods devised by FSIN staff.
We know that our colleague Dmytro Khylyuk was set upon by service dogs at a penal colony in the village of Pakino in the Vladimir Region of the Russian Federation, and that he was also starved.
Journalist Dmytro Khilyuk has been held captive in Russia since March 2022.
Moreover, when an epidemic of scabies broke out among the prisoners, they were denied treatment. Prisoners were forced to sing the Russian national anthem and memorize Russian songs. Refusal resulted in beatings. Ukrainians were forced to burn off or scrape away their tattoos with stones.
In the same Pakin prison, prisoners were forbidden from sitting or lying on the bunks in their cells during the day: they were forced to stand all day, causing their legs to swell. Threats of rape and execution were common. In some prisons, prisoners died after being unable to endure such conditions: we know of dozens of such cases.
In Taganrog Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 alone, where our colleague Viktoria Roshchina was held, at least 15 Ukrainian citizens died as a result of torture and harsh detention conditions.
***
Unfortunately, the scope of this report—and indeed any other—does not allow us to describe each of these detention facilities.
As of April 2025, we are aware of 186 detention facilities where Ukrainian citizens are being held. Torture occurs regularly in at least 29 of them. This is confirmed by a UN report and a Ukrainian intelligence report, both of which our project has at its disposal. However, this is not an exhaustive list.
In the second part of our series, read about how Russia created a system of prisons designed to torture prisoners, and exactly who is involved in the torture of Ukrainians.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.