Children, the Shocking New Weapon in the Ukraine War

Teenagers are being recruited for one-off covert attacks behind enemy lines.

- Lilia Yapparova

At dawn on May 8, 2023, a 17-year-old Russian teenager named Pavel Solovyov climbed through a hole in the fence of an aircraft plant in Novosibirsk, Russia.

He and two friends were looking for a warplane that could be set on fire. An anonymous Telegram account had promised them one million roubles ($15,800) to do so—a surreal amount of money for the boys.

But when the boys saw the Su-24 supersonic bomber, they got scared. This heavy warplane, versions of which have been pounding Ukraine for the past 3 1/2 years, looked too impressive and dangerous to simply incinerate.

After some deliberation, the teens decided to singe the grass around the jet but film it to make it look like the plane was engulfed in flames. The stranger from Telegram had promised to pay only after receiving video evidence of the arson.

Solovyov is now serving almost eight years in a penal colony. He and his friends, detained within a week, were found guilty of carrying out deliberate acts of sabotage. The children did not suspect that this was, as Russian investigators concluded, a covert attack on behalf of Ukraine.

Solovyov and his friends, according to his mother, had simply been asked to "help the aircraft plant get insurance" for the burned plane. Her son once dreamed of opening his own car repair shop. "Now," she told me, "all his plans have crumbled."

THE NEW HYBRID WAR

This is far from an isolated incident. Small-scale attacks like it are part of a new kind of hybrid warfare being carried out by Russia and Ukraine. Over the years since the Russian invasion, the security services of both countries have discovered a cheap and accessible asset—youngsters who can be recruited for one-off covert attacks, often without even knowing who they are working for.

It's a shocking development in this brutal war: the weaponizing of children.