Record Number of Minors Charged with Terrorism in Russia

Since 2022, the number of criminal cases against minors opposing the current government’s policies in Russia has sharply increased. Many of these minors are sentenced to long prison terms under “terrorist” charges.

Human rights activists note that such repressions were not seen even in the late Soviet era, reports German media Deutsche Welle (DW). They point out that the current crackdown on dissenters in Russia, particularly those who oppose the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now extends to minors. Teenagers are being sent to juvenile correctional colonies for terms ranging from 2 to 6 years, with courts disregarding their young age and the often conflicting evidence of their guilt.

DW has documented at least eight cases involving minors prosecuted on politically motivated charges, most commonly under “terrorist” articles, which carry criminal responsibility from the age of 14. At this age, minors can also be charged with serious crimes like murder, rape, and participation in mass riots.

The youngest detainees so far are 13-year-old Timur and 14-year-old Sasha, schoolchildren from Noyabrsk in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. They were detained in September on suspicion of setting fire to an MI-8T helicopter. No public information on the charges against them has been released.

According to Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the “First Department,” Russian law does not allow for a 13-year-old to be charged under any criminal article, but the older student could face charges under “terrorist” articles.

In Omsk, 16-year-old students Anton and Roman face charges under two counts of the same article after being detained in September for allegedly setting fire to an Mi-8 helicopter. Smirnov explains that there could be more such cases, as most are held in closed sessions and parents often avoid publicizing them.

“Some parents have pro-government views and pressure their children to confess to acts they are accused of,” Smirnov notes. He believes minors are easier targets for law enforcement: “It is easy for them to extract necessary confessions from children.” The maximum sentence for minors under “terrorist” charges is 10 years in a juvenile colony.

As of 2023, Russia had 13 juvenile correctional colonies housing 842 minors. From 1999 to 2017, human rights advocate Lyudmila Alpern regularly visited women’s and juvenile prisons as a member of the Public Monitoring Commission in Moscow. She recalls that over 20 years ago, the situation in juvenile colonies was dire: “Imagine, in 63 colonies across the country, around 25,000 children were held — space was barely sufficient.”

Previously, a prosecution office in temporary occupied Luhansk has forwarded charges against Ivan Semykoz, a 19-year-old Ukrainian, to a Russian court, alleging his involvement in “terrorist activity.”