On 4 October 2023, several Ukrainian and international media outlets reported on the disappearance of Victoria Roshchyna, a Ukrainian freelance journalist who planned to travel to the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine via the Russian Federation to report on the situation there. Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland on 25 July 2023 and was expected to reach the occupied territories three days later. She has been missing since August 3, and her current location is unknown, according to a statement by International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), a non-profit organisation, and Sevhil Musayeva, the editor-in-chief of the news website Ukrainska Pravda, who spoke to the International Press Institute (IPI).

According to separate reports quoting Musayeva, Roshchyna told her sister on August 3 that she made it through border checks but did not share her location, adding that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has since told Roshchyna’s family that Russian forces had captured her. “Unfortunately, we didn’t know where she went, how she crossed the border with Russia, or where she last got in touch”, Musayeva was quoted saying. Roshchyna’s family reported her missing to the Ukrainian authorities on August 12 and filed an official missing case on September 21.

Roshchyna has been covering the Russian aggression against Ukraine for several Ukrainian media outlets, including Ukrainska Pravda and the news websites Hromadske, Novosti Donbassa, and Censor.net. Musayeva told IPI that Roschina was not on assignment for Ukrainska Pravda, “but she asked what topics we could theoretically be interested in”.

Roshchyna was one of the very few Ukrainian journalists to travel to Russian-occupied territories to cover the impact of the war. In March 2022, she was taken captive by Russian forces while reporting near Mariupol, when the city was under a prolonged siege by Russian forces. She was released a week later and continued working as a journalist from Kyiv.