Almost 50 children told police about attempted recruitment by the Russian special services

Almost 50 minors have reported attempts by Russian special services to recruit them since Ukrainian law enforcement began urging children to come forward with such information, as reported by Vasyl Bohdan, Head of Ukraine’s juvenile police, during the national joint 24/7 newscast.

Two teenagers from Ivano-Frankivsk, who, in March of this year, 2025, manufactured explosives at the behest of Russian special services to commit a terrorist act. One of the teenagers died in the explosion. Photo: SBU.

An SBU-created chatbot for reporting recruitment attempts has been operational since late last year, 2024.

In just the past few months, there have been several instances where children, instead of agreeing to Russian proposals, have contacted the police. In March, at least two schoolchildren from the Ternopil region did so, and in May, recruitment attempts were thwarted by children from the Kirovohrad region and two boys from Kryvyi Rih, the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The recruitment of children is one of the challenges minors face during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The UN, in assessing such cases, suggests that they may constitute another violation of international law committed by the Russians.

Russian special services sometimes resort to blackmail to recruit children. For instance, in one case in the Ternopil region, a schoolgirl agreed to cooperate because she was threatened with the online publication of explicit photos, which had been secretly taken from her phone for this purpose.

Despite the numerous problems associated with the war, Ukrainian children are demonstrating remarkable resilience, researchers report.