The body of a young Ukrainian woman who died in Russian captivity after being held incommunicado for months was returned to Ukraine showing signs of torture, Ukrainian prosecutors have said.
Kyiv said the remains of journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who went missing during a reporting trip, were returned as part of a body exchange between Ukraine and Russia in February.
Yuriy Belousov, who heads the war crimes department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, said that forensic examination found “numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment… including abrasions and hemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib and possible traces of electric shock.”
He said the experts have determined the injuries were sustained while Roshchyna was still alive.
Russia is known to use electric shocks as a method of torture against detained Ukrainians, and the widespread nature of the practice was documented by CNN in the past.
Belousov said that repeated DNA analyses confirmed the body belonged to Roshchyna, even though it reportedly arrived from Russia labeled as “an unidentified male.” He said the state of the body made it impossible to determine the cause of Roshchyna’s death, but added that Ukraine was working with international forensic experts to get more answers.
Roshchyna’s colleagues at Ukrainska Pravda said her body was returned from Russia with missing organs. Citing members of the investigating team who handled her remains, they said the brain, eyeballs and part of the trachea, or windpipe, were missing, in what they said could have been an attempt by Russia to disguise the cause of death.
CNN has reached out to the Russian Federal Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova and to the Russian penitentiary services for comment.
