More than 700 people recruited by Russia have been detained in Ukraine since the spring of 2024. Among them are about 175 teenagers under the age of 18. All of them are involved in espionage, arsons, and explosions that were remotely organized by Russian intelligence agents.
This was reported to the Financial Times by the spokesman for SBU Artem Dekhtyarenko.
According to him, most of them carried out their tasks consciously, but some did so unconsciously because they were deceived.
The Russian recruitment campaign began last spring with tasks of setting fire to cars and power plants along the railway. Then they changed their strategy and started setting fire to the TRC.
This year, he said, the Russians began using Ukrainians as “suicide bombers”. These were cases where the Russians remotely detonated explosives with recruited Ukrainians, killing them.
None of the cases involving minors have yet been tried in court, but some could come this year. Dekhtyarenko says that minors cannot foresee the consequences of their actions, making them particularly vulnerable to recruitment by Russian military personnel. And the consequences are serious — sometimes fatal. Ukrainian officials say that Moscow is turning Ukrainian teenagers into weapons of war against Ukraine.
The recruitment channels work in a similar way: an anonymous user contacts young people via Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, or Viber with offers of quick and easy money. After establishing contact, Russian-based curators provide contact information and instructions. The promised payments range from $100 to $1 000.
Sometimes Russian spies recruit Ukrainians under the guise of “quests” — games similar to treasure hunts that are popular with teenagers. Two friends, ages 15 and 16, were intercepted in Kharkiv in December while they were allegedly monitoring air defense positions and coordinating targets for airstrikes and arson.
According to SBU, the teenagers believed they were participating in a game with a cash reward. According to the rules of the quest, they received geolocations from the FSB, had to arrive at the specified places, take photos and videos, and provide a brief description of the territory. The teenagers transmitted the collected information to an FSB agent via Telegram. According to SBU, the Russians used this intelligence to carry out airstrikes on Kharkiv.
In June, the agency warned of a new recruitment tactic: Russian agents masquerading as Ukrainian officials to trick or coerce children into committing acts of sabotage or cyberattacks allegedly on behalf of Ukraine.
At the same time, a national information campaign is underway in Ukraine to counter recruitment. According to the juvenile police, by the end of May, about 50 Ukrainian minors reported attempts at bribery on messengers.
- In December 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine launched an official chatbot "Spali FSBeshnika" so that Ukrainian citizens could report when Russian agents were trying to recruit them for arson, terrorist attacks, or mining.
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