Russia Recruits Ukrainian Children for Sabotage

Tetyana Dotsyak

Kyiv-based TV correspondent

Tuesday, 25 March, 2025

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V, a tall, thin 15-year-old boy with a short haircut, used to be a good student who achieved high grades. But the Kharkiv teenager now faces years behind bars for planting a home-made explosive device near the city’s police department.

In November 2024, V was looking for a part-time job when a friend suggested trying out a Telegram channel where he had already sourced some work. Once V joined the channel, he was contacted by someone who asked if he knew how to make explosives. As it happened, V was an excellent chemistry student and had previously experimented with making explosives to blow up in the forest, for fun.

"[He offered] a thousand dollars - one bomb. I agreed," the boy said.

This time, he was given instructions to build a serious device, operated by remote control. He bought the necessary elements and assembled the explosive.

His contact promised him an extra 7,000 US dollars if he also installed a surveillance video device near the Kholodnohirsky district police department.

“I didn’t want to do it, but they persuaded me,” V said, adding, “I was afraid that they would remotely detonate the explosive in my hands.”

On December 9, 2024, the boy left the bomb outside the Kholodnohirsky police department. It exploded almost immediately; he was nearby and narrowly escaped death. A few days later he was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine and charged with carrying out a terrorist act.

According to Ukrainian investigators, Russian agents have recruited hundreds of minors to commit acts of terrorism or sabotage since the full-scale invasion began.

In just the last year, according to National Police figures, children across Ukraine committed more than 600 crimes at the behest of Russian special services.

But the young offenders find themselves in a legally ambiguous position. Although deemed to have criminal responsibility under Ukrainian law, some experts argue that they are actually victims of war crimes themselves. International law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 15 to participate in armed conflicts, with one protocol including those under the age of 18.

“I Was Scared”

“The main place of recruitment is the well-known Telegram messenger, where many groups are created offering easy work, easy money,” said Oleksandr Shevchenko, head of the department for protecting children's interests and combating domestic violence at the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office.

He said that 24 children in the Kharkiv region alone were suspected of committing acts of terror or sabotage in the last year. The youngest was only 12 years old. Of these, six cases involving eight children have been transferred to court.

The recruiters used various psychological techniques to lure the children, Shevchenko continued, in particular targeting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The main motivating factor was financial, with only one of the minors under investigation in Kharkiv having expressed pro-Russian views.

“This is one of the elements of waging war against Ukraine,” he explained. “The method of correspondence with the children indicate the work of professional special services [and] psychologists.”

The modus operandi was to first offer a simple task for a small fee, with the assignments becoming progressively more challenging and lucrative. 

One boy, 15-year-old D, told IWPR that his first task had been to place an advertisement for a truck driving job for 400 UAH (ten dollars) on Telegram. The next was to daub offensive graffiti about President Volodymyr Zelensky on a wall, for which he was paid twice as much. 

After that, he was ordered to set fire to the power equipment at a railway station in the city of Karkiv. For this he was offered 10,000 UAH (240 dollars). If he refused, the Russian agents threatened to harm his father, the boy said.

“I was scared for my father. I went to the gas station, bought firelighters, water, matches, and I came to the railway and set fire to the energy transformer," D said.

He wanted to buy food and clothes, said the boy. 

The children's actions have variously been categorised as terrorism, sabotage, intentional destruction of property and espionage. 

Most of these crimes were intercepted at an early stage. However, some children have been killed or badly injured during the course of carrying out these attacks. These include multiple acts of arson, particularly targeting cars used by military personal as well as army recruitment centres, local council buildings and post offices.

On March 11, 2025, a 17-year-old teenager was killed in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine when an improvised explosive device detonated prematurely. His 15-year-old friend lost both legs and two passers-by were also injured. 

According to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office, half of those detained are girls.

On December 8, 2024, M, a 15-year-old girl, left an explosive near another police station in Kharkiv. In a video captured by a street camera, two people seen standing near the door of the building and two police officers leaving the premises narrowly escaped injury when the device detonated.

“A friend showed me a group on Telegram about a job with earnings from 1,000 to 3,000 dollars,” M told IWPR. “They wrote that it was arson. I refused and they offered me the chance to help catch a bad police officer who was taking bribes.”

Following her handler’s instructions, she set up a phone with a video camera near the police station, then took a package she was given and placed it in a rubbish bin by the building.

“I was sure that I had done nothing terrible. I thought there was a listening device in the package. I didn't know there was a bomb there,” M said.

Criminal Liability

Some argue that the children carrying out these offences are themselves victims of war crimes.

A recent UN report noted  “a surge in credible allegations” that Russia was recruiting Ukrainian children “to conduct surveillance and transmit information on the Ukrainian military, or to commit sabotage and arson targeting military objects or public property with links to the military”. 

The report continued, “Should these incidents be linked to the armed conflict, such use of children would be in violation of the prohibition in international law on the recruitment or use of children in hostilities.”

Ukrainian law enforcement is indeed carrying out investigations into the actions of Russian recruiters under Article 438 of the criminal code of Ukraine concerning the violation of the laws and customs of war.

Andriy Andrushko, head of the department of Criminal and Legal Policy of Uzhhorod National University, agreed that there were grounds to consider recruited children victims of war crimes,

Ukraine has ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflicts, which defines an age limit of up to 18 years. 

Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) prohibited the conscription into the armed forces or participation in hostilities of children under the age of 15. 

However, Article 438 of the criminal code of Ukraine, which provides for liability for war crimes, refers more generally to international treaties.

Andrushko said that terrorist attacks and sabotage could be interpreted as participation in hostilities.

"We need to start from a broader context: from the presence of an armed conflict, from the fact of the enemy country's desire to spread hostilities to the entire territory of Ukraine, from the damage that was caused or could have been caused, etc,” he continued. “Of course, in order to recognise a crime as a military crime, it is necessary to prove that a person was recruited specifically to participate in hostilities.”

Oksana Bronevitska, an associate professor at the department of Criminal Law at the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, argued that it would be more accurate to categorise the actions of both recruiters and perpetrators as acts of terror or sabotage. 

"We can talk about planning a terrorist act, committing a terrorist attack, using weapons, committing an explosion, arson or other actions if such actions were committed with a specific purpose" she said.

The children who committed such acts could not be considered victims, Bronevitska continued, as the attacks were not considered participation in armed conflict. 

"Recruitment to participate in an armed conflict means that representatives of the Russian Federation recruited a minor to directly participate in hostilities [for instance] they are told, ‘Go shoot soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she concluded.

Both agreed that, whether the children were recognised as victims of war crimes or not, they must be punished for the crimes they committed. 

In Ukraine, criminal liability begins at the age of 14, and parents found culpable will also face punishment. Younger offenders can expect measures including special educational measures or placement in a special school for up to three years.

Punishments are likely to be more lenient than the maximum allowed by law. V, for instance, who set a bomb outside the Kholodnohirsky district police department, is liable for term of imprisonment up to 12 years if found guilty. However, the maximum sanction will not be applied, with mitigating circumstances taken into account, including his age.