Teenage saboteurs. 240 minors were accused of sabotage in Russia since the start of the full‑scale war against Ukraine

On the night of August 11, 2024, school students Pavel Khazov and Kosmos Nevolainen set fire to the cab of an electric locomotive at Babaevo station in the Vologda region.

Khazov climbed through an open window of the locomotive, while his friend handed him three bottles of flammable liquid. The teenager doused the cab with gasoline, then climbed out and set it on fire. The explosion threw Khazov onto the tracks, where he was pinned down by the locomotive’s door, which had been blown off. Nevolainen helped him get out, after which Khazov filmed the burning cab on his phone and mimicked a pistol with his fingers in the frame. The students were soon detained. At the time of the arson, they were 15 and 16 years old. Khazov was sentenced to nine years in prison, and Nevolainen to six.

The boys found the arson job posting online. Later, during questioning, Khazov said that the ad had been posted on a Telegram channel. They thought it would be an easy way to make some extra money.

Since the start of the war, according to Mediazona’s estimates, at least 240 people under the age of 18 have been detained in connection with cases of terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage. In the vast majority of cases (205 instances), law enforcement officials attributed their actions to a desire to earn money; six teenagers committed arson under the influence of scammers, and five stated that they were opposed to the war. In the remaining cases, the motive is unclear.

Sportiks and shady schemes

Young people who were looking for work as sportiks (“sporties”) have come under investigation for sabotage and terrorist acts. This is the term used for athletic people willing to carry out minor criminal acts for money—such as damaging someone’s property, beating someone up, or collecting debts. Clients and perpetrators find each other on specialised forums or Telegram channels. In the criminal cases involving these teenagers, the websites RuTOR and “Sportiki” were mentioned, as well as the Telegram channels “Brave Guys,” “Black Schemes/Chat/Dark Schemes,” and “Jobs for Sportiki.”

One of the defendants, 22-year-old Stanislav Khamidullin, told the court that he initially was going to work for darknet drug store owners who wanted to punish couriers suspected of theft, but then decided that setting fire to a relay cabinet was “easier than beating someone up.”

Teenagers often commit with friends; such groups may also include adults. Human rights activists from Memorial noted in a report for International Children’s Day that teens are highly susceptible to the “peer influence effect”: “In the presence of friends, the risk of committing an offense increases significantly.”

After establishing contact with an anonymous client, a teenager may offer such work to their acquaintances, drawing more and more people into arson. This was the case with one of the largest groups of arsonists, who carried out 17 acts of arson from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk.

In December 2022, Artem Begoyan, an 18-year-old resident of Mordovia, was looking for a part-time job and met a man on Telegram who introduced himself as Artur. Artur suggested that he set a fire on the railroad tracks. Fearing he might be scammed, Begoyan passed the first job on to his 16-year-old online acquaintance, Kirill Shekhter. A resident of Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, Shekhter subsequently began working directly with Artur and recruited 11 more people into the group.

These young people were mostly united by friendships, though there are known cases where such groups were held together by blackmail.

For example, in 2023, according to investigators, 36-year-old Yevgeny Zaichkin and 20-year-old Kirill Gorkov forced three minors to set fire to relay cabinets in the Moscow region and film the act. They intimidated the teenagers by threatening them with legal trouble. At the same time, they kept all the money received from the client (according to investigators, from Ukraine’s special services) for themselves.

The clients always ask them to record the result of their “work” on video and to make a specific hand gesture on camera: the horns sign, the shaka sign, the V sign, the finger gun, etc. None of them mention that such arson is classified as a terrorist act or sabotage. On the contrary, the clients downplay the danger and convince the teenagers that nothing will happen to them.

They usually give a convoluted explanation for instructions to set equipment on fire, attributing them to insurance fraud. The publication Veter quoted the following statement from one of the clients: “Bro, I’ll tell you how it is. We’ve got this thing going with insurance payouts. It’s when a client insures their property, conspires with the insurance company, and hires people like us. We damage their property, they pay us the agreed-upon amount, and they collect the payout and split it with the insurance company.”

Most often, teenagers set fire to relay cabinets—probably because, in the clients’ view, this is the easiest possible task. Other targets can include cell towers, transformers, and even military equipment.

Those who make contact with the clients for the first time are usually given assignments to set something on fire along the railroad tracks. Most are apprehended at this stage. However, there have been cases where young people, after a series of arson attacks, moved on to more serious targets.

This was the case with the group led by 16-year-old Kirill Shekhter from Krasnoyarsk. In December 2022, the young people set fire to several relay cabinets, a transformer, and a locomotive. The group was uncovered when two of its members traveled to Primorsky Krai on New Year’s Eve to set fire to fighter jets at a military airfield. An anonymous client promised 20,000 roubles ($260) for setting fire to the cabinets, $2,000 for the locomotive, and $800,000 for a fighter jet, one of the witnesses said during the investigation.

Russian security forces typically accuse Ukrainian intelligence agencies of recruitment. Some videos of arson attacks filmed by minors did indeed appear on the social media accounts of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate. For example, in January 2024, a 17-year-old teenager set fire to a Su-34 fighter jet at an airbase in the Chelyabinsk region; a video of the arson, featuring a the horns sign in the frame, appeared on the Telegram channel of Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR). And in April of that same year, two 16-year-old high school students set fire to a helicopter at a military airfield near Samara; the HUR reported at the time that the Mi-8, which had been used in the war against Ukraine, had been destroyed. That same month, the Main Intelligence Directorate announced the destruction of a Ka-32 helicopter at an airfield near Moscow—five young men aged 20 to 22 were tried for this arson.

At the same time, human rights group Memorial notes that after the start of the full-scale war, the FSB began actively using provocations in cases related to the war in Ukraine. In March, the Sverdlovsk branch of the FSB admitted that it had conducted a “social experiment” to find people willing to carry out acts of sabotage for money. “Ten people went all the way. In three hours, we found ten potential candidates willing to do any job for money, including acts of sabotage,” a representative of the security service said. Those who agreed were handed over to law enforcement, she added.

The young people who agreed to set fires explained that they wanted to spend the money on New Year’s and birthday gifts for their parents, shoes for their girlfriend, a tablet for their brother, or to pay off a debt for a car speaker. The wife of Artem Begoyan, who was convicted of sabotage, said that his accomplices spent their occasional earnings on alcohol and drugs.

For teenagers, the sums that clients promise them for quick jobs—starting at 10,000 roubles, or roughly $130—sound tempting. At the same time, arsonists are often cheated and end up getting paid nothing. There is still a chance to earn small sums for setting fires on the railroad, but in the case of large payouts for military equipment, this is unlikely. Teens who decided to attack more serious targets usually say they never received the promised riches. Moreover, such arsonists are quickly apprehended.

On top of that, the teenagers are risking their health: an arsonist from Kineshma was injured by a transformer door that flew open, and a 17-year-old resident of Buryatia suffered severe burns—in surveillance footage, he is seen sitting on a sofa with his face and hands bandaged. Thirteen- and 14-year-old schoolchildren had to call an ambulance after setting a helicopter on fire in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. They did this using cigarettes, and their faces were severely burned.

But the most serious consequences of this kind of “online work” are the extremely long prison terms for terrorism and sabotage.

Prevention and prison terms: how the state handles the issue

Arson is classified as a terrorist act (Art. 205 of the Russian Criminal Code) or sabotage (Art. 281). Some of the teenagers were not charged because they had not reached the age of criminal responsibility (the youngest of those detained was 11 years old).

Liability under the articles on terrorist acts and sabotage begins at age 14. The age threshold for the latter article was recently changed; until November 2025, it was 16 years old. In June 2026, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, spoke about his initiative to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12, but such amendments have not yet been adopted.

Sometimes the charges are further aggravated by the addition of treason (Art. 275): correspondence with a client may be classified as such if law enforcement officials deem the client to be a representative of the Ukrainian special services.

Human rights defenders from Memorial believe that law enforcement agencies are unjustifiably charging teenagers under terrorism-related articles specifically to circumvent age restrictions.

According to Mediazona’s observations, teenagers facing terrorism charges receive actual prison terms—starting at three years in a juvenile correctional facility.

The longest known prison term in a case against teenagers for attacks on the railway and communications systems is nine years in a penal colony. That is the sentence received by Pavel Khazov from the Vologda region and Vladimir Kutuzov from the Ivanovo region. At the time of the arson attacks, they were both 15 years old.

In addition to harsh sentences, authorities are trying to combat the wave of arson attacks with warnings and threats. For example, by the summer of 2023 at the latest, stenciled inscriptions began appearing on relay cabinets across the country, informing the public that sabotage is punishable by up to life in prison. Law enforcement agencies are also trying to warn teenagers through press releases about new arrests.

In March 2024, the Siberian Transport Police posted an image with the large caption: “Arson isn’t a trend. It’s a crime. Don’t ruin your life.”

The Investigative Committee also addressed the parents of teenagers: “The Investigative Committee of Russia urges parents to warn their children about the full range of negative consequences for committing terrorist crimes.”

In the winter of 2026, Russian schoolchildren were shown the film “Betrayal” by state TV propagandist Andrei Medvedev, about Daria Trepova and others who had been sentenced in Russia on charges of terrorism or sabotage. Former intelligence officials provided commentary for the film—and they emphasized that punishments in such cases must be as severe as possible, to deter potential terrorists and saboteurs: “If a person has never heard of anyone paying with their life for this, they don’t realize how serious it really is.”

Despite harsh sentences and warnings, teenagers are caught for arson every month. On May 28, 2026, a 15-year-old from St. Petersburg was arrested for setting a transformer on fire. In June, a 17-year-old high school student set fire to a transformer on a railroad line in the Moscow region; he was also sent to a pretrial detention centre. On July 6, a 14-year-old was detained in the Leningrad region after setting fire to a relay cabinet.

Editor: Maxim Litavrin