Ukraine has detected a new Russian attack line that is already leaving victims among its younger ranks. This time, the front is not in Bajmut or Donetsk, but in adolescents’ phones. As reported the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) has been detecting how Russian intelligence uses social networks such as Tiktok, Telegram o Discord To capture kids through easy money promises. The formula is as simple as effective: a striking video, a battery of bills and a phrase: “How not to fall into the trap of Russian secret services.”
The problem is that many fall. Often, the tasks seem harmless: deliver a package, take a photo to an electrical substation or paint a painted on a wall. But, as an SBU officer has warned in a class aimed at adolescents, “that easy money can end in criminal responsibility or death.” In one of the most serious cases, a minor was manipulated to become a suicide. “Remember that in Ukraine criminal responsibility begins at age 14,” the agent insisted during the workshop.
OBJECTIVE: Cracking kids
The Russian campaign is not new, but in the last year it has intensified. The Ukrainian authorities have been organizing seminars for months to train students for the detection of these traps. Secret services fear that precariousness and war routine will push young people to accept these orders without understanding what is really behind. According to SBU’s own figures, more than 600 citizens have been accused of terrorism, sabotage or fire caused after being recruited by Russian intelligence. A more alarming fact: one in four was a minor.
The phenomenon is not limited to the Ukrainian territory. Moscow has also extended its networks to countries in the European Union. As Reuters revealed last week, more than a dozen teenagers have been arrested in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and Lithuania for their involvement in cases of espionage or sabotage related to Russia. The same pattern is repeated: adolescents with Internet access, opaque contacts in closed messaging channels and immediate rewards promises.
Money, anonymity and a war in the background
The most disturbing thing for the Ukrainian authorities is that these campaigns are not presented as military operations, but as logistics exchanges without consequences. The anonymity of the networks and the normalization of the conflict between the younger generations, which have grown with war as a backdrop, generate a conducive terrain so that these minors do not measure the reach of their actions.
“They ask you to do something small, without context. And when you realize what you have done, you are already caught,” explained one of the SBU instructors during a formative session. On many occasions, young people do not know that they are participating in actions aimed at damaging critical infrastructures, facilitating attacks or destabilizing strategic areas.
Ukraine, which continues to receive daily attacks on its energy infrastructure and military positions, has decided to strengthen the preventive approach. Network campaigns are now accompanied by adapted audiovisual materials for adolescents, visits from agents to schools and a warning that summarizes everything: “There are no innocent tasks when they come from the enemy.”
