On a September evening in 2024, a group of Ukrainian teenagers huddled beside train tracks near a village in Chernihiv. The region was under constant attack by Russian drones and missiles.
Fifteen-year-old Vitalii pried open the doors of cabinets containing Ukrainian railroad communication and signalling equipment. The boys poured flammable liquid over the cabinets and set them on fire.
They paused to film, doused the flames with water from plastic bottles they had packed, then shared the video clip with another boy, who forwarded it to a man called “Sania.”
The man had offered hundreds of dollars online to perform specific tasks – amounting to sabotage against the Ukrainian state. Vitalii pocketed the equivalent of $23 for his role in the act.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, more than 1,100 Ukrainians have been accused of committing arson, terrorism or sabotage in betrayal of their country, according to Ukraine’s security service, the SBU.
One in five have been minors. The minors are usually recruited online by strangers using aliases, mostly assumed by Ukrainian investigators to be working for Russia’s special services.
In most cases, those charged tend to be motivated by money rather than pro-Russian sympathies. A March 2025 UN report noted a surge in credible allegations that Russia had used Ukrainian children to conduct surveillance and commit sabotage targeting the Ukrainian military.
Last year, a 17-year-old died and a 15-year-old was badly injured when an explosive device they had been instructed to build exploded. Recruitment of teen spies is not limited to Ukraine – at least a dozen teens in Germany, Poland, Britain and Lithuania have been arrested in Russia-linked cases of sabotage and spying.
Reuters followed the case of Vitalii and his friends for a year and reviewed nearly a hundred pages of court documents to understand the larger questions posed by this growing group of young people: What does justice look like for minors induced to betray their country? Can they return to a society battered by four years of war?
Sometimes when teens are arrested and accused of sabotage, the SBU posts images of them on Telegram and Facebook, with their faces blurred. The posts incite immediate outrage.
“These idiots! When he gets out of prison, he won’t be able to live here, people won’t forgive!” reads one comment.
As of February 2026, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said 240 minors were involved in crimes against national security, arson, and terrorist acts related to the possible involvement of Russia’s special services. Of those, 102 have been detained.
Hennadiy Yachnyi, a physics teacher from a high school in Chernihiv, commutes to the local detention centre several times a week to teach classes behind bars. The growing number of minors accused of sabotage led to an extension of a program that pairs school teachers with detained minors – a rotating group covering everything from history to mathematics.
“I don’t see them as criminals,” Yachnyi said. “These are students, just students.”
Antonina Kharchenko, the school’s director, began sending teachers to the detention centre in 2023. None are required to go. Some teachers at other schools have refused, viewing the children’s crimes as unforgivable.
“They all come from Ukrainian families,” Kharchenko said. “They decide to earn a penny but they’re still children. And look around – this is a place with poverty, with war, fathers being away at the front. This is fertile recruiting ground for Russians.”
Children looking to make easy money are duped into accepting questionable offers from strangers online, she said. Parents, largely, have no idea.
At the school itself, a police officer is stationed at the entrance and the SBU regularly speaks to its more than 1,000 students about the dangers of interacting with strangers on social media. Many of those students have parents at the front. Some have lost them.
Asked if she felt uncomfortable teaching accused saboteurs when her own graduates are serving and dying at the front, Kharchenko pulled a well-worn book from the cupboard of her office.
“This, as you must know, is the constitution of Ukraine,” she said, pointing to Article 53. “Everyone has the right to an education. We’re educating children at a time of war. We’re educating them in shelters, we’re educating those online who are abroad, and we’re educating the children in the jail as well.”
(inputs from Reuters)
