Russia has hundreds of juvenile terrorists — and the war in Ukraine has only bolstered their ranks. Their crimes range from justifying violence to arson attacks on recruitment offices. That, at least, is the picture painted by the courts. To understand this issue better, this week I want to look at some of the key findings from a recent joint investigation by OVD-Info and Novaya Gazeta into prosecutions of juveniles for terrorism-related offences.
Here’s what you’ll find this week
- The kids are not all right
- Provocateurs around every corner
- Why it’s hard to keep track
To read this newsletter in your browser, click here.
The kids are not all right
The investigation involved compiling a dataset of 111 juveniles who have been arrested across 13 federal subjects under terrorism-related Articles of the Russian Criminal Code. It identified X people, aged between 14 and 21 (those over 18 were under that threshold when they were first arrested). Dmitriy Anisimov from OVD-Info identifies two broad categories that most of these cases fall into:
- Antiwar comments: This covers both online and offline activity. Previously, these types of cases were prosecuted under the auspices of discrediting the army. Increasingly, however, the authorities are classifying them as justifying terrorism — allowing for stricter penalties to be imposed.
- Different forms of resistance/violent activity: A lot of these are things like arson attacks and acts of sabotage, targeting recruitment offices, railroads, etc.
The official list of terrorists and extremists supports the idea that juvenile terrorism is widespread: Rosfinmonitoring’s list, as of May 2026, has at one time or another included 944 people under the age of 18 (the video mentions 700 people. The discrepancy is never explained, but I presume this figure refers to people currently on the list and the remainder have been removed). The numbers are growing: 160 names were added in 2024, 355 in 2025. They are included in the same list as what might be considered more “hardened” terrorists, such as the perpetrators of the Crocus City Hall attack in March 2024.
In short, the picture that emerges from official data is that juvenile terrorism is a significant problem.
Provocateurs around every corner
Anisimov says that many of the cases in the second, more violent category involve provocateurs: People who incite the juveniles to commit their crimes. Sometimes, these provocateurs are employees of the Russian security services, engaging in entrapment; ;sometimes, they are members of the Ukrainian security services, seeking to destabilise Russia; and sometimes they are simply fraudsters and conmen, looking to make a quick buck.
It is worth noting that the claim that the Russian security services are provoking their own underage compatriots into committing crimes is not a conspiracy theory: It is openly stated in some of the official court proceedings and even FSB public statements about “social experiments”. But it arguably has consequences for the authorities’ ability or willingness to address more serious security threats: while investigators vigorously pursue perpetrators, they don’t look too hard at the provocateurs. As Anisimov puts it, because they might find that the investigation leads them to their colleagues on the other side of the wall. Yet, as Novaya Gazeta note, the act of provocation by state bodies is itself against the law.
The journalists speculate that juveniles make a ripe target for provocateurs of all stripes: They lack the life experience to see that they are being manipulated until it is too late, it’s easier to play on their emotions, they’ll do things for a dare, etc. However, the authorities make no allowances for age in the prosecutions that follow. If anything, he argues, juveniles’ rights are violated even more thoroughly than those of adults. Torture, fabrication of evidence, denial of access to lawyers — all of these are prevalent problems in the Russian criminal justice system. But juveniles have certain protections afforded to them by the law — meaning they have more rights that can be denied.
Anisimov therefore argues that these cases can be considered political persecution, even though such a classification can seen problematic. In his view, even if they committed the crimes of which they are accused, they are denied the right to a fair trial — and to a punishment proportional to the crime. It also forms part of a wider machine of political repression.
Why it’s hard to keep track
Tracking a phenomenon like juvenile terrorism is far from simple. The investigators highlight a number of methodological issues that complicated their research:
- In general, the authorities have become less transparent about such matters. They publish fewer statistics; the courts don’t respond, substantively or at all, to queries; and lawyers are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. The data has always been bad and often manipulated, but it has also gotten worse.
- In cases involving juveniles, the courts use the age of defendants as grounds to hold hearings behind closed doors. This might be the only time that the age of the defendants is taken into account.
- Alternative sources of information are also lacking. The relatives of defendants don’t want to discuss the case publicly for fear of repercussions — for themselves at work or among their neighbours, or for the defendants in prison. The defendants don’t want to draw attention to their case because they are worried it might further complicate their post-prison future. Often not being aligned with a wider cause, they want to get out and get on with their lives.
The result is that, all too often, the only information that is available is a cursory official statement issued by investigators or the courts. Indeed, this is a problem affecting all terrorism-related reporting: It is often hard to triangulate data or interrogate claims.
Instead, we’re just left to consider the consequences of what we can confirm. In this case, that means hundreds of people who will find that the terrorism label is hard to shake, even after you get out of jail.
Think someone else would find this useful? Why not forward this to them?