The teenage terrorists of February and March
Lured by promises of quick money on Telegram, some teenagers became de facto suicide bombers for Russian intelligence, according to Ukraine's security service.
In the last few weeks, Russian intelligence services have used at least six teenagers to carry out attacks in Ukraine. It starts on Telegram, with promises of quick money. And for some, it ends in death, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
“The Russian special services have started using new tactics,” the SBU said in a recent warning on Instagram. “They undermine their agents, use them ‘in the dark,’ and then get rid of them as unnecessary witnesses. If you or your friends are offered to ‘just take a package’ to the Trade Center, police, or other administrative building, know that they want to kill you.”
At least some teenagers appeared to know they were participating in operations for Russia, from allegedly manufacturing explosives to disguising them for their final destinations.
A timeline of recent incidents, according to Ukrainian intelligence
In early February, a 15-year-old boy was killed while delivering an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Eastern region of Kharkiv, where heavy fighting has persisted. According to the SBU, he picked up the device from a 28-year-old Russian agent, a woman who had been unemployed. She made the bomb, placed it in a sports bag, and left it in her driveway for the boy.
Then he took a taxi with the IED, disguised as a parcel, to a military unit of Ukraine’s National Guard. Russian special services were tracking his route — apparently using GPS navigation through his cell phone, according to the SBU. Once he reached his location, the Russians remotely blew up their young courier and the serviceman to whom the fake parcel was addressed.
Counterintelligence officers say they found the woman who made the device and arrested her at her home, where they identified components to make a new bomb as well as a cell phone that allegedly contained evidence of her cooperation with Russia.
On March 7, a 19-year-old girl was supposed to carry out an attack in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea which is still controlled by Ukraine. She was told to leave the IED, disguised as a package, near an administrative building. As with 15-year-old boy in Kharkiv, the Russians were apparently planning to detonate the device remotely, potentially killing her and anyone else in the area.
Instead, Ukrainian authorities caught and arrested the girl after she arrived at the site of the planned strike. She had placed the explosive in a household bag. Law enforcement found a device with an incendiary mixture and two mobile phones — one for Russia’s remote detonation, the other for her to communicate with the Russians, the SBU said.
She was allegedly given step-by-step instructions, which included taking the device from a hiding place and connecting it to a cell phone so that the Russians could activate the IED remotely. She now faces up to 10 years in prison.
Around 6:30pm on March 11, across the country in Ivano-Frankivsk, an old city at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, two other teenagers were blown up. Images show them carrying bags, said to be explosives that would be placed near the city’s train station.
They were locals and friends who had studied together in college, according to the SBU. And from a makeshift bomb lab — a high-rise apartment building near the train station — they made explosives disguised as thermoses. They rented the apartment with money from a Russian handler. And they equipped both devices with remote detonation capability and metal nuts to increase their destruction.
The 17-year-old died in the blast and the 15 year-old was hospitalized with grave injuries. Two other people nearby were wounded. At the same time, the Russians remotely detonated another bomb that had been left in the teens’ rented apartment.
The surviving 15-year-old faces the possibility of life imprisonment, based on the Criminal Code of Ukraine — assisting in a fatal terrorist act and illegally manufacturing explosives. If that’s not enough, two 15-year-old girls were also allegedly involved in the preparations.
Because these cases involved minors, their names were not disclosed.
New tactics means new lessons
A few days ago, a source who had lived in one of the targeted locations flagged the incidents. “I do have suspicions that Russia will use this as a new tactic from now on,” he said. “Middle East-style, recruiting the locals to plant bombs in critical locations.”
Of course, Vladimir Putin publicly stated this week, “We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” and claimed that Russia wants longterm peace. He announced that Ukrainians who lay down their arms in the occupied region of Kursk will be spared death and treated humanely. But the man doesn’t have a great track record. (Not to mention his maximalist conditions for peace.)
So I went to Javed Ali, the former Senior Director of Counterterrorism at the National Security Council during President Donald Trump’s first term. I asked him if Russia was taking a page out of the terrorist playbook in the Middle East, one teenage courier and IED at a time.
“That tactic is well established over the past 20 years,” Javed told me. The homemade bombs. The targeting of youth. He said the two boys at the train station seemed to have the potential to cause the most damage. “But then why did the device detonate only, sadly, killing one boy and injuring the other? Did it did it malfunction? … If you’re only killing the couriers, then what’s the point?”
He saw some differences with Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. They pulled off dramatic mass casualty suicide attacks. And the suicide bombers were willing participants. “These were all volunteers who signed up to conduct those attacks. You have to be willing to sacrifice yourself.” The teenagers who died in Ukraine may not have truly known what they were signing themselves up for.
That led Javed to ask another question. Why wouldn’t Russia just launch a drone or a cruise missile at the train station or other populated places? (They certainly have done so in the past.) The answer may point to something much darker. “This all could be just the early stages of a direct action campaign,” he said.
“It’s like a proof of concept, where you’re trying to figure out how to make it work and refine it. And every time you conduct an operation, then you have to take a step back and go, ‘Okay, did we achieve our objectives? What went well? What didn’t? If it’s linked back to the GRU [Russian military intelligence], if it’s a professional military service, I would have to think that they’re learning lessons.”
I would not rule out the added bonus of psychological warfare — Russia’s security services signaling to Ukrainians that not only are you not safe on the streets or in buildings, but your children could be used in our operations.
What is clear, the Russians are setting their sights far and wide, taking advantage of broad opportunity on Telegram. As you can see from the map I built, the incidents over the last few weeks occurred in both Eastern and Western Ukraine.
It is worth noting that Ukraine conducts brazen assassinations on Russian soil, but public information suggests they do it differently, even when they use unwitting agents. Take the Russian woman who was allegedly used to kill a prominent military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, in St. Petersburg. Darya Trepova reportedly gave Tatarsky a gift, a sculpture of a soldier’s bust, which exploded as he put it back in its box. She testified in court that she was only told that the sculpture contained a microphone inside.
But she was not a teenager. And she also reportedly supported the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny and participated in an anti-war rally when Russia’s full-scale invasion began. That suggests ideological motivation. It is unclear if the teens Russia used in Ukraine were driven purely by assertions of quick money or something deeper.
As part of Kyiv’s effort to counter Moscow’s newest threat, the SBU has been urging Ukrainians and their families to report recruitment attempts through a chatbot on Telegram. It’s called “spaly_fsb_bot.”
And though the SBU has broadly blamed Russia’s special services for these attacks, this bot name suggests that they are mainly talking about the FSB, Russia’s domestic security agency. The FSB has also been behind the hit teams roaming Kyiv to try to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It seems the FSB is now willing to use teenagers in low-level and small-scale operations, no matter the outcome.