Ukraine warns teenagers the enemy is inside their phones

The Star

5 hours ago

LVIV, Ukraine: The man wore a khaki uniform, a baseball cap and a camouflage ski mask, heightening the drama in the high school classroom. Because he worked as an intelligence officer, he did not disclose his name, creating even more mystery.
His presentation started with a video showing a stack of US$100 bills on a mousetrap with a red skull and crossbones. 'How not to fall into the trap of Russian intelligence services,' the video advised.
By the end, he had gone through screen after screen of chilling examples from the past year, including one teenager who died after being turned into a suicide bomber by the Russians without his knowledge. Others would come close. And the 50 young students in the room, ages 16 and 17, would be riveted.
Think of this class, in a secondary school in the western city of Lviv, as the Ukrainian version of 'Scared Straight'. The course, introduced this spring by Ukraine's top internal security agency and the national police at high schools nationwide, aims to deter teenagers from falling under the influence of Russian operatives. They have started paying Ukrainian minors to set fires or plant homemade bombs, Ukrainian authorities say.
'I remind you that criminal responsibility in Ukraine begins at 14 years of age,' said the camouflaged man at the presentation on a recent Wednesday. 'Unfortunately, this easy money can lead either to criminal liability or to death.'
For more than a year, Ukrainian authorities say, the Russian state security agency, known as the FSB, has targeted Ukrainian teenagers on social media apps like Telegram, TikTok and Discord. They are offered hundreds or even thousands of dollars to do simple tasks: Deliver a package. Take a photograph of a power substation. Spray graffiti.
The FSB did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Many young people do not necessarily know they are being recruited. The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, says the teenagers often just search for 'easy money' on Telegram, where the Russians are waiting for them.
But some agree to more complicated missions, often because they were blackmailed for the first task they performed, or for compromising photographs hacked from their phones.
The SBU said late last month that authorities had accused more than 600 people of trying to commit arson, terrorism or sabotage in Ukraine after being recruited by Russian intelligence services. Of those, about one in four were minors. (The adults often had criminal records or a history of drug abuse.) One perpetrator was only 13.
In May, the head of the national juvenile police said in a TV interview that almost 50 other children had reported to authorities that Russians had tried to recruit them.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have engaged in clandestine warfare. Ukraine has recruited people in Russia for targeted high-level killings, law enforcement sources said. For instance, the Ukrainians claimed responsibility for assassinating a top Russian general and his aide with a bomb planted in a scooter in December.
But with the recruitment of young Ukrainians, the Russians are taking a new step by aiming for more indiscriminate attacks, near military recruitment centers or railway stations, said Roksolana Yavorska-Isaienko, an SBU spokesperson for the Lviv region. It is reminiscent of how teenagers were used as suicide bombers in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
In December, the news in Ukraine was filled with reports of a significant case. The SBU and the national police detained two groups of teenagers in the eastern city of Kharkiv who they said had been tricked online into joining a fake 'quest' game, in which the 15- and 16-year-olds were sent tasks like setting fires and taking photographs and videos of certain targets, even air defenses. Ukrainian authorities said the Russians used the information to carry out airstrikes in Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city. These claims could not be independently verified.
During the class, the camouflaged agent and Yavorska-Isaienko went through other examples, one by one.
In March, in the case that resonated the most with the students, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old were recruited on Telegram in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk with the promise of US$1,700, Ukrainian authorities said. Following instructions, the teenagers built two bombs out of thermos flasks and metal nuts. When they tried to deliver one of the bombs, authorities said, Russian agents detonated it remotely near the train station. The 17-year-old was killed, and the 15-year-old lost his legs.
In April, the SBU caught a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old who burned train relay boxes in Lviv. They were recruited on Telegram, authorities said. Searches of their cellphones showed text messages between the teenagers and their Russian handlers. 'Yeah, the money will be there tomorrow,' the handler wrote, adding that it would arrive around lunchtime. 'Got it, bro,' one of the teenagers responded. Eventually, about US$178 was transferred to his account.
And in May – just three days before the class – two teenagers in the western city of Rivne made an explosive device from Russian instructions, put it in an abandoned building, positioned an ax there and covered the whole contraption with paint, authorities said. Then they called emergency services, claiming there was a dead person. After the police responded, the bomb exploded, but no one was harmed. The teenagers were arrested.
The recent class was about the 200th that the agency has done in the Lviv region since the outreach program started in April. The presenters knew how to hold the teenagers' attention.
'Maybe not all of these special operations are reported in the media – but believe me, the enemy is not sleeping,' Yavorska-Isaienko said. 'They are working actively and carrying out illegal activities, as strange as it may sound, directly inside your phones.'
She added, 'And when you hear an offer to earn quick money for a brand-new iPhone or US$1,000, of course, it sounds very tempting. Sometimes, the task is disguised as a simple courier delivery, taking pictures of critical infrastructure or spraying provocative graffiti. That is often the first step toward your recruitment.'
This classroom in the Lviv secondary school No. 32 resembled a typical science classroom in the United States, complete with creaky wooden floors; a poster of a tiger on the wall; models of DNA and lungs in the back; and teenagers in hoodies and jeans, heavy-metal T-shirts and a Barbie sweater.
But these students did not make jokes or whisper the way many teenagers do. They asked questions: How did the Russians do surveillance? How could they help fight the FSB?
These students had grown up with the war against Russia. Relatives were fighting on the front lines. One girl's uncle was missing.
'Can I help and report it to the security services if I've already been approached for recruitment?' asked Volodia Sozonyk, 17, a boy in a blue hoodie and a manga T-shirt. 'If they've sent me an address or something I need to do, can I identify that spot for your operatives to help?'
Yavorska-Isaienko and the camouflaged man told the students they could anonymously report any recruitment attempts to a new chatbot called 'Expose the FSB Agent.'
And Yavorska-Isaienko told the students to use their common sense.
'No one in real life will suddenly offer you US$1,000 or US$2,000 just like that,' she said. 'You need to understand: The only free cheese is in the mousetrap.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.