Week-ending 8 August 2025
“She is the bravest person, the bravest journalist, I have ever met in my life. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s a fact,”
– Sevgil Musayeva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, one of the outlets for which Roshchyna worked for, in a speech on Maidan.
Source: Shaun Walker, ‘Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv,’ The Guardian, 8 August 2025
“Once she started something, she never quit. If she started a case, a story, we editors never had to remind her that something was happening further in the story. She simply never abandoned her characters or her stories. […] Our task is not to leave the theme of the occupied territories, however hard it is. The best way to remember her is not just with words and memories of the work she already did, but to continue this work.”
– Ukrainian journalist Angelina Kariakina, who worked with Roshchyna at the Hromadske news website.”
Source: Shaun Walker, ‘Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv,’ The Guardian, 8 August 2025
“Viktoriia was a person who didn’t know the word ‘no’. Everyone explained that she shouldn’t go to occupied territory. No editors were ready to take responsibility for this, but she still understood that this was her mission, and did it. […] She was genuine, and genuine people often burn with intensity, and with that fire they ignite everyone around them, but very often this passion costs them the most precious thing – their health and their life.”
– Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an MP and the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on freedom of speech.
Source: Shaun Walker, ‘Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv,’ The Guardian, 8 August 2025
Background from The Guardian: Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work. Roshchyna was reporting on Russia’s systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing. On Friday, an Orthodox church service at the golden-domed St Michael’s Cathedral in central Kyiv was followed by speeches on Maidan, the city’s central square. Mourners included Roshchyna’s editors and journalistic colleagues, diplomats, MPs and members of the public who came to pay their respects. She was later buried at the Baikove cemetery. […] Roshchyna was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, earlier this month. She received it “for her unwavering belief that freedom will overcome everything,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. [Source: Shaun Walker, ‘Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv,’ The Guardian, 8 August 2025]
