He blended in easily, another teenager scrolling through his phone on a bus. But in his pocket, Ukraine’s security service said, were co-ordinates and photographs of sensitive military targets intended for Russian intelligence.
The 16-year-old Ukrainian, whose name has not been made public as he is a minor, was arrested and accused of spying for Russia, the Ukrainian security service (SBU) said this week.
Ukrainian officials said he was recruited by Russia’s federal security service (FSB) via the messenger app Telegram, on which Russian operatives have increasingly targeted young users with offers of quick cash in exchange for their collaboration.
The teenager was instructed to take pictures of Ukrainian troop positions and send location data back through encrypted channels. But the SBU had been tracking him, officials said, and when he raised his phone near a military site in Dnipro city, southern Ukraine, he was arrested on the spot.
Investigators believe the gathered intelligence could have been used to guide Russian missile or drone strikes like the thousands that have devastated cities and critical infrastructure across Ukraine in recent months. On Tuesday, Russian ballistic missiles struck targets in Dnipro, killing 20 people and injuring more than 170 others, regional officials said.
The teen now faces charges of treason and a possible life sentence.
Ukrainian officials warn that the case is not an outlier, but is part of Russia’s efforts to destabilise the country from within by enlisting young and vulnerable operatives, turning teenage curiosity into a tool of espionage and sabotage.
Beyond the traditional theatre of war, senior officials in Kyiv told the Financial Times they are seeing the systematic grooming of teenagers and young adults, including those orphaned and displaced by the fighting, struggling financially or merely eager to score enough cash for a new iPhone.
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The officials described Moscow’s actions as turning Ukraine’s adolescents into weapons of war against their own.
“The enemy is aggressive, committing various crimes against national security, including recruiting agents from among our own citizens,” SBU head Lt Gen Vasyl Malyuk said.
Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
SBU spokesperson Artem Dekhtiarenko said that, since spring last year, the agency had arrested more than 700 people implicated in espionage, arson and bomb plots orchestrated remotely by Russian intelligence agents. Of those, around 175 – or a quarter – were under the age of 18.
Most of the recruits carried out their missions wittingly, but some did so unwittingly after being duped, the SBU spokesperson said.
“Underage people cannot foresee the consequences of their actions”, making them especially vulnerable to Russian recruitment, Dekhtiarenko said.
The consequences have been serious, even deadly. Russia’s campaign “started last spring with tasks of burning cars [and] electricity hubs along the railway”, he said. Then they “upgraded their strategy and started burning military recruitment centres”. Earlier this year, he said, “they switched to using Ukrainians as suicide bombers”.
The problem has grown to such a scale that Ukrainian authorities have launched a nationwide awareness campaign: warnings are sent in mass text messages; plastered on billboards alongside highways; and shown on repeat on passenger trains. A video targeting teenagers to raise awareness of the matter teaches them “how not to fall into a trap and stay one step ahead” of the FSB.
SBU agents have also been invited to schools to teach children how to spot Russian efforts to groom them. The campaign slogan aims to flip the script on Moscow: “Don’t burn your own! Burn the enemy!”
By the end of May about 50 Ukrainian minors had reported attempts to bribe them on messenger apps, said Ukraine’s juvenile police, which is involved in the awareness campaign.
The recruitment channels follow a similar pattern: an anonymous user reaches out to youths over Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp or Viber with attractive offers of quick and easy money.
Once contact is made, Russian handlers provide co-ordinates and instructions, ranging from photographing military objects or air defence systems to planting explosive devices or conducting arson attacks on energy infrastructure and recruitment offices. The promised payments range between $100 (€85) and $1,000.
If a decade ago there were some Ukrainians sympathetic to Russia’s military actions, then there are hardly any left who support “Russkiy mir” – the Russian world – Dekhtiarenko said. “So [Russia’s intelligence agencies] have changed their approach to offering people money.”
On Wednesday, the SBU and national police arrested a 19-year-old woman in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv who allegedly carried out a bombing on the instructions of Russian agents.
After being approached on a Telegram job advert channel, authorities said, she received instructions on how to make an improvised explosive device. She then planted the bomb inside an e-scooter which was donated to the Ukrainian army, the SBU said. The resulting blast killed one soldier and injured another.
In another case, in March, two boys aged 15 and 17 were recruited to carry out a bombing at a railway station in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk. The explosive hidden inside a bag one boy was carrying detonated prematurely, allegedly triggered remotely by their Russian handlers, essentially turning them into unwitting suicide bombers. One boy was killed, the other injured, along with two bystanders.
Sometimes Russian spies recruit Ukrainians under the guise of “quests” – scavenger hunt-like games that are popular with teenagers.
Two friends aged 15 and 16 were intercepted in December in Kharkiv while allegedly carrying out surveillance on air defence positions and co-ordinating targets for air strikes and arson. They believed they were playing a game that promised a financial reward to the winners, the SBU said.
“Under the rules of the quest game, the children received geolocations from the FSB,” it said. “Their task was to reach a specific location, take photos and videos of designated sites, and provide a brief description of the area.”
The teens sent the gathered intelligence to an FSB handler over Telegram, and the SBU said, “the Russians used this intelligence to conduct air strikes on Kharkiv”.
In June, the SBU warned of a new recruitment tactic: Russian agents posing as Ukrainian officials to trick or pressure children into carrying out acts of sabotage or cyber intrusion on their country’s behalf.
Many children accused of the crimes have been charged and tried as adults, raising concerns among some human rights defenders and legal experts. Under Ukraine’s martial law, people charged with sabotage, terrorism, collaboration and treason face lengthy sentences, potentially including life imprisonment.
Yulia Gorbunova, a senior Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that special protections for children existed during peacetime and during war, including in cases where they were perceived as security threats and suspected of committing crimes against national security.
“When children are suspected of unlawful acts, authorities are obliged to treat them in accordance with international juvenile justice standards, prioritising rehabilitation and reintegration,” she said.
“Detention or imprisonment of children should be used only as a last resort and they should have legal counsel from the moment their underage status is confirmed.”
Ukrainian officials say that due process is being observed and that juvenile suspects are receiving special consideration.
Dekhtiarenko said the minors charged in treason cases have been allowed legal representation. None of their cases has gone to trial yet, but some could this year.
The government is also under pressure to demonstrate a firm response to the growing threat of collaborators, even if they are underage. “To us they are state traitors,” Malyuk, the SBU chief, said. – The Financial Times
