As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky met German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Friday, seeking support in the fight against Moscow’s invasion of his country, prosecutors said they would investigate the death of a journalist in Russian detention as a war crime.
Victoria Roshchyna, who would have turned 28 this month, disappeared in August last year after travelling to Russian-held east Ukraine on a reporting trip.
She remained missing until April 2024, when her father received a letter from Moscow’s defence ministry saying she was being held in Russian detention, according to Ukraine’s main journalists’ union.
The circumstances of her arrest were not made public and it was not clear where she was being held inside Russia.
Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s prison of war coordination headquarters, confirmed on Thursday that she had died in detention.
“In connection with the information about the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna in Russia, the criminal proceedings opened over her disappearance have been reclassified as a war crime combined with premeditated murder,” the Prosecutor General’s office said on Friday.