Spying agencies are now targeting school children

Time of India

2 days ago

Spy agencies are increasingly targeting children for recruitment. Both Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of using children as spies. Lithuania has warned schools about Russian attempts to recruit teens. Ukrainian intelligence also allegedly recruits Russian teenagers. Minors are used for sabotage, espionage, and arson. Financial incentives and blackmail are common recruitment tactics.
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Recently, a shocking case of Pakistan's spy agency ISI recruiting a social media influencer as a spy hit the headlines. A travel blogger, Jyoti Malhotra's travels were probably funded by the ISI. Spy agencies always look for the most vulnerable and least suspicious individuals to recruit. During the Russia-Ukraine war , spying agencies have found a new target -- school children. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of recruiting children as spies . Children are easier to recruit and are hardly suspected to be spies.A few days ago, Lithuanian schools were warned over Russia's attempts to recruit teens. The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport recently warned Lithuanian schools that Russian intelligence agencies may attempt to recruit teenagers for hybrid activities, as per a report by a local news outlet, Delfi. Director of the National Crisis Management Centre Vilmantas Vitkauskas said warnings and recommendations to school principals were sent taking into consideration that Russia has already tried this tactic in Ukraine and may use it against other countries, too.Vitkauskas said children and teens on social networks may receive messages from strangers suggesting they earn some money. At first, they may be asked to take pictures of some insignificant buildings or paint graffiti. Later, they may be asked to take pictures of military equipment , military installations or to set fire to military facilities or lay explosives in locations they are instructed.Some 22% of Ukrainians recruited by Russian intelligence services to prepare sabotage acts or terrorist attacks in the country are minors, Artem Dekhtiarenko, the spokesperson of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said last month.As per a report in The Kyiv Independent, the youngest executors of Russian orders, whom the SBU exposed for setting fire to Ukrainian Railways ' (Ukrzaliznytsia) railroad switchboards, were 13-year-old teenagers. Vasyl Bohdan, head of the Juvenile Prevention Department of Ukraine's National Police, said that the police are currently seeing a decrease in the number of cases of child recruitment compared to last year, while the number of reports of attempts to recruit children has increased.Citing teenagers who have been recruited, the police identified several reasons why minors agree to such cooperation: material gain, psychological manipulation techniques based on a sense of adventure, romanticization of crime, and blackmail. "Having some sensitive information about the child, either personal or related to simple tasks already completed, the handler can blackmail them into disclosing it," Bohdan said.In March, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claimed that Russia's intelligence service blew up two Ukrainian teenagers it had recruited to carry out a terrorist attack in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.Last year in December, there were reports of local law enforcement in Kharkiv arresting two groups of alleged Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents, all of whom were 15 and 16-year-old. The teenagers were allegedly tasked with carrying out espionage, directing missile strikes, and committing arson on behalf of Russian operatives, as per an SBU statement released at that time. Under the guise of "quest game" rules devised by the FSB — where players complete tasks as part of a game — the minors were given geolocation coordinates and were instructed to travel to those locations, take photographs and videos of targets, and provide brief descriptions of the areas to Russian spies via anonymous messaging apps, as per a media report that cited Ukrainian authorities.Russia too accuses Ukraine of recruiting Russian teenagers as spies. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed in March that Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) is working to collect personal information about Russian schoolchildren with the intent of recruiting them for criminal activities, adding that the effort is directed by the West.According to the statement reported by RT.com, the HUR aims to deceive educators into divulging their students' personal data. This information would then be utilized by Ukrainian agents to enlist teenagers for 'subversive activities that threaten Russian security and for sabotage within Russia,' the FSB said, adding that the infiltration was 'directed by NATO special services.'The FSB has previously reported that it apprehended multiple Russian citizens accused of conducting or planning sabotage operations on behalf of Ukraine, some of whom were minors. Ukrainian agents are said to employ various tactics for online recruitment, ranging from financial incentives and promises of future benefits to coercion, financial scams, and subsequent blackmail.Last year in September, two teenagers in Omsk, Russia, set fire to an Mi-8 helicopter at an air base using a Molotov cocktail and cigarettes, Newsweek had reported based on social media reports. The teenage boys, aged 13 and 14, made their way to the helipad where the helicopter was stationed, and doused it in flammable liquid. The teenage boys were reportedly promised 5 million rubles (about $55,000) by an unknown individual on the Telegram messaging app for carrying out the task.Last year, Russia.Post had reported that In Russia and Ukraine, the number of acts of sabotage, often involving minors, is growing rapidly. For a promised reward from foreign security services, railway facilities, military enlistment offices, army vehicles and even helicopters are being torched, it said. Referring several sabotage incidents involving minors, it said, "These and other small-scale terrorist attacks (primarily arson of railway infrastructure and military enlistment offices), committed in Russia almost daily and often by minors, are likely part of the hybrid warfare being carried out by the Ukrainian security services, which are thus trying to compensate for the relative weakness of Ukraine in the face of a powerful and aggressive Russia."The report also mentioned several such acts in UKraine. "On September 12, the head of the National Police, Ivan Vyhovsky, said that more than 200 arson attacks on military vehicles had already been recorded in Ukraine since the beginning of the year. A quarter of them were committed by minors. In fact, there have been many more such cases. As of the end of July 2024, in Kharkiv alone there were about 40 cases of arson of military vehicles committed by teenagers aged 12 to 18. In Odessa, the SBU detained a gang of couriers aged 18 to 24 who moonlighted as arsonists. They had burned 15 army SUVs."