Reporter’s body ‘returned with no eyes, brain’

The body of a journalist was returned to her home country with her eyes and brain missing, according to an investigation.

The body of a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped and killed by Russians was returned to her home country with her eyes and brain missing, likely to obscure the torture she suffered, according to an investigation.

Victoria Roshchyna’s brain, eyes, and larynx had been removed before her body was sent back to Ukraine in February, two and a half years after she went missing in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories in August 2023, a report found.

Roshchyna’s body was labelled as an “unidentified male” when it was handed over, during an exchange of 757 Ukrainians’ remains.

An unusual Russian marking, “SPAS,” possibly meaning “total arterial damage to the heart,” found on the Russian listing could reflect the officially-listed cause of death.

Victoria Volodymyrivna Roshchyna was a Ukrainian journalist who reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The 27-year-old’s body was much smaller and lighter than the others, according to the report.

The gruesome treatment of the body could have been done to hide how badly she was tortured in Russian captivity, the report from Forbidden Stories published on Tuesday claimed.

Still, the body showed obvious signs of torture including abrasions, haemorrhages, a broken rib and possible evidence of electric shocks, the head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office’s war crimes department, Yuriy Belousov, told Pravda.

A bruise on her neck possibly pointed to strangulation, the report noted.

Due to the mummified state of the body, the official cause of death is still undetermined, with Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General arranging further tests, the report said.

Her father has also requested additional foreign exams, prosecutors told Ukrainian outlet Hromadske.

Roshchyna’s body was returned.

Parts of her body were missing according to a report.

Russia only confirmed that they had detained Roshchyna in May 2024, nine months after she disappeared.

She was taken to a brutal penal colony in Berdyansk, eastern Ukraine known as one of Russia’s harshest facilities for Ukrainians, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights.

She then spent time in a pre-trial detention centre in Taganrog, just over the border in Russia before dying during transportation to Moscow.

Roshchyna wrote for a number of Ukrainian outlets as well as Radio Free Europe.

She was previously held by the Russians for 10 days in the early days of the war in March 2022, earning the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2022 Courage in Journalism Award.

This story appeared in the New York Post and has been reproduced with permission