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Journalist Victoria Roshchina died in russian captivity on September 19, 2024. It was previously known that the woman was illegally held in the Taganrog remand prison. However, Slidstvo.Info journalists learned that 8 days before her death, Roshchina was transferred to Pre-Trial Detention Center 3 in the city of Kizel, Perm Krai. It was in this place of imprisonment that the journalist died – journalists from closed russian bases learned that her death certificate was issued in Perm.
Slidstvo.Info spoke with a soldier who was released from captivity and saw Victoria Roshchina in Kizel, traveling there with her on the same train.
In addition, the journalists identified the leaders of the remand prison who may be involved in Roshchina’s death.
This is stated in the Slidstvo.Info investigation.
Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchina was captured by the russians in August 2023. Then she went to report from the territories occupied by russia.
For more than a year, her relatives and friends waited for Victoria to be exchanged and returned home. However, in October 2024, her father received a letter from the russians that Victoria had died in captivity. All this time, she had been in various prisons, including those in the occupied territories and Taganrog Remand Prison 2. It was in Taganrog that Victoria first crossed paths with military man Danyl, with whom Slidstvo.Info journalists managed to speak. He was returned to Ukraine during the exchange in April 2025.
“This was very rare, but it happened that we crossed paths, and we could exchange a few words with each other. I was sitting in the far cell, and she just looked through the peephole. I was just then near the door, and we talked a little. She asked what unit I was from, how long I had been in captivity. And she said that there would be an exchange soon. They told her that she would be exchanged,” says Danylo.
Previously, Slidstvo.Info received testimony from Roshchina’s cellmate at the Taganrog remand prison. She said that Victoria was tortured — the journalist’s body had many stab wounds that she had received while in captivity in the territories occupied by russia.
“When they were interrogating, the russians used electric shock. I saw several scars on her body — definitely on her arm and leg. She had a stab wound, well, a fresh scar. Between the bone and the elbow in the soft tissues. And the scar was about three centimeters,” says the witness.
In September 2024, prisoners began to be transported deep into russia to remand prison No. 3 in the city of Kizel, Perm Krai. The distance from Taganrog to this detention center is about 2,500 kilometers. According to military Danylo, the russians organized the transfer of prisoners because the Taganrog remand prison began to be reequipped for russian prisoners.
“THE WOMEN WERE CUT BALD, THEY WERE CRYING”
The transfer took place in several “stages” — Danylo was going along with Victoria. The trip took three days: from September 9 to 11. Danylo says that on the train, Victoria looked emaciated and even thinner than when he last saw her. However, she could walk independently.
From the train, the prisoners were transferred to pickup trucks, in which they were delivered to Remand Prison 3 in the city of Kizel, Perm Krai, russia. The soldiers released from Kizel, with whom Slidstvo.Info spoke, said that in the isolation ward, they had to go through a harsh so-called reception.
“They beat me constantly for an hour or two. They gave me a minute to breathe and then started beating me again. I lost consciousness twice during the “reception.” The women were shaved bald; you could hear them crying,” says Danylo.
“Everyone was beaten very hard, wherever they went. They could hit them there and rip off some organ,” said another soldier released from captivity on the condition of anonymity.
Not everyone could withstand such “receptions.” Both men testified that a civilian hostage, the mayor of Dniprorudne, 63-year-old Yevhen Matveiev, died due to severe beatings in Kizel.
However, the torture in the Kizel remand prison did not end only at the “reception”.
“You stand there in place. All day long, you have your own imaginary square, in which you stand. That is, it is forbidden to move around the cell; you are not allowed to sit down. It is also forbidden to talk to each other, because the camera sees everything. They can also open the windows. And this, excuse me, Kizel, is very cold there. That is, there is snow there, I think, even in the summer. Once I remembered that it was about 30 degrees below zero,” says 22-year-old Danylo Murashkin, who was returned to Ukraine in July 2025 after 3.5 years of captivity.
In the cells of the remand prison in the city of Kizel, prisoners were forced to listen to russian music and lectures on the distorted history of russia and Ukraine all day long. The prisoners could only perform any actions on command.
“They burned my whole back with a stun gun. It was their favorite toy there. They probably bought it themselves. Once they beat me so hard with a stun gun that I lost consciousness, then I came back to my senses and opened my eyes. I had wounds that started to fester. The swelling was very strong; it was inflammation,” says Danylo Murashkin.
“HER DEATH OCCURRED IN THE KIZEL CITY REMAND PRISON”
Slidstvo.Info Journalists from closed russian bases managed to obtain information from the death certificate of Victoria Roshchina, which the Leninsky Department of the Civil Registry Office of the Perm City Administration issued. The date of death recorded in this document is September 19, 2024.
The fact that Victoria died on September 19 was confirmed to Slidstvo.Info by the Prosecutor General’s Office. This happened directly in the remand prison.
“She was in this place for less than two weeks, and it was there that she died. It was in the remand prison in the city of Kizel. Victoria’s body was transferred to Ukraine in such a state that it did not allow for a full-fledged forensic examination, the results of which would have provided us with information about the cause of Victoria’s death,” says Taras Semkiv, the head of the second department of procedural management and support of public prosecution of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict, the Prosecutor General’s Office.
From sources, journalists managed to obtain a list of employees of Remand Prison 3 in the city of Kizel. Slidstvo.Info verified this and found that in September 2024, the duties of the chief were performed by a 39-year-old Vitaly Spirin. According to Spirin’s social networks, he is married and has two children. In 2023, Spirin earned 1 million 49 thousand russian rubles in the remand prison. This is about 450 thousand hryvnias.
As of November 6, 2024, Vitaly Spirin was replaced as head by Vyacheslav Perevozkin, who has headed the remand prison to this day.
“It is obvious that in such a place of deprivation of liberty as Kizel, such actions cannot take place without the knowledge of the head. These are systematic manifestations of the cruel treatment of Ukrainians in places of deprivation of liberty. They are definitely taking place with the connivance and instructions of the remand prison management,” says Taras Semkiv, the head of the department of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The head of the security department, Evgeny Trofimov, Deputy Head for Personnel and Educational Work, Konstantin Chekalov, and Deputy Head for Logistics, Alexey Dorodnov, could also have been in contact with the deceased, Victoria Roshchina.
All employees of the remand prison in Kizel, except for Dorodnov, continue to work at the facility.
Vladyslava Kobko
Maksym Dudchenko
Yaroslava Nikitiuk
Slidstvo.Info
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