The Guardian, in collaborazione con Ukrainska Pravda e la francese Forbidden Stories, pubblica la ricostruzione degli ultimi mesi di vita della giornalista Viktoriia Roshchyna, il cui corpo è stato riconsegnato a febbraio con numerosi segni di tortura, privo di occhi, cervello e laringe.

Clipboards in hand, intermediaries from the Red Cross checked their lists. For each body shrouded in white plastic, the Russians had provided a number, a name, a location, sometimes a cause of death. And then, at the very bottom of the last page, a mystery entry: “NM SPAS 757.” The letters were abbreviations, taken to mean “unidentified man” and “extensive damage to the coronary arteries”.

It would be weeks before officials could confirm what the Guardian and its reporting partners are publishing today. The unlabelled remains were those of a woman. Not a soldier, either, but one of the most high-profile civilians detained since the full-scale invasion.

The journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was captured in the summer of 2023 near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. It was at least her fourth reporting trip into the occupied territories. She was by this stage of the war the only Ukrainian journalist prepared to risk crossing the frontline in order to pierce the information blackout imposed by Russia.

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This account, part of the Viktoriia project, is part of an investigation into the abduction and systematic torture of what Ukraine believes could be as many as 16,000 of its civilians, the second part of which will be published on Wednesday.

Most of those detained are being held without charge. The conditions of their detention constitute a suspected war crime, and evidence is being gathered for eventual prosecutions.

The detained are aid workers, journalists, business owners, local politicians, church leaders, and anyone suspected of resisting the invasion. They are being held at more than 180 facilities in the occupied territories and inside Russia itself. And yet, in all the noise around peace talks, they are rarely mentioned. It is a subject Roshchyna felt was under-reported, and it was the focus of her last mission.