The Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna went missing in August 2023 while pursuing a story in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. She died in a Russian prison in September 2024. Her body was given to Ukraine in February 2025.

A forensic examination determined that she had been tortured and that several of her organs had been removed. She was 27 years old at the time of her death.

Roshchyn isn’t the only Ukrainian civilian to have been slaughtered by the Putin regime. Three years ago, in March 2022, just several weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some 500 Ukrainians were tortured and executed in the town of Bucha, north of Kyiv. The mutilations and massacres — of both Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war — have continued unabated since then.

Needless to say, the bestial Putin regime is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide.

As tragic as Roshchyna’s death is, it’s also profoundly political. The Russian authorities could have kept her body or disposed of it some way. Instead, they decided to return it to Ukraine — not in 2024, but in 2025. The timing may be accidental: never underestimate the........

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