Award-winning Ukrainian freelance journalist and former RFE/RL contributor Viktoria Roshchyna has been missing since she went on a reporting trip to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine more than two months ago.
The Washington, D.C.-based International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) -- an organization working internationally to elevate the status of women in the media -- said Roshchyna's family and friends said they had not heard from her since August 3, when she left for Russian-occupied regions.
Roshchyna, who had been captured twice before by Russian forces last year while reporting from the war zone, is the 2022 winner of IWMF's Courage in Journalism Award.
Roshchyna's father, Volodymyr Roshchyn, told The Daily Beast newspaper that his daughter left Ukraine for Poland on July 27 and was supposed to reach the occupied territories in the east of Ukraine via Russia three days later.
Roshchyn said he last spoke to his daughter by phone on August 3, when she said she had made it through days of border checks but did not tell them her precise location. The family first reported Roshchyna as missing to the Ukrainian authorities on August 12.
"For my daughter, journalism is the most important thing in her life, she is very devoted to her profession," Roshchyn told The Daily Beast.
"I asked her to slow down after her first captivity, I said, 'Vika, I will pay your salary, just please don't go to the front' but she was firm, unstoppable -- she was not able to stop covering the news of this war on the occupied territories for her readers."
"The Ukrainian security service confirmed to us that Viktoriya was captured by the Russians. Officials told us that there are many 'frozen' Ukrainian detainees in Russian prisons, among whom she may be," Roschyn said.
Russian veteran activist Svetlana Gannushkina reported that she had submitted a request about Roshchyna's whereabouts to the office of Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova, but "it may take more than a month for an answer," she said.
Roshchyna is the author of a series of reports for RFE/RL, which she collaborated with as a freelancer in 2022.
