At dusk beside railway tracks in the Chernihiv region, 15-year-old Vitalii and several of his friends did something that, at their age, should have belonged to someone else’s crime story. They opened cabinets containing railway equipment, poured flammable liquid over them, set them on fire and filmed the flames on a phone.
A small payment was supposed to follow the video. Not ideology, not hatred of Ukraine, not conscious service to the enemy — just a few dozen dollars promised by a stranger online. To the state, it looked like sabotage. To the teenager, it appears to have looked like a side job whose meaning he did not fully understand.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, more than a thousand Ukrainians have been accused of arson, terrorism or sabotage in the enemy’s interest. One in five has been a minor. That figure opens one of the hardest moral zones of the war: how to judge children whom the enemy uses as cheap tools of destruction.
According to Daycom’s analysis, Vitalii’s case matters not only as a criminal episode. It shows how war alters the very meaning of guilt. A child can commit an act that objectively harms the state while also being part of a targeted attack — not a missile strike, but a psychological, social and digital one.
The logic of Russian recruitment is simple and cynical. It does not require convinced supporters of Moscow. It needs poor, frightened, lonely or merely naive teenagers with phones in their hands. Strangers using aliases contact them, offer “tasks,” promise quick money and do not explain that setting fire to railway equipment can become a crime against national security.
Молодий чоловік проходить повз портрети загиблих українських солдатів у Чернігові, Україна. Регіон майже постійно зазнає обстрілів з початку війни — Томас Пітер
In Vitalii’s case, the payment was almost absurdly small in peacetime terms. He received the equivalent of $23 and later could not even clearly remember how he had spent it: perhaps on a gift for his brother, perhaps on school supplies. For that sum, he now risks years in prison.
That does not erase the harm. Railway infrastructure is critical in wartime. It moves military cargo, evacuees, humanitarian aid, energy equipment and the life of both the rear and the front. Damage to signaling or communications systems can have consequences a child may not be able to imagine.
That is precisely why the law must be exact. There is a difference between deliberate treason and a crime committed by a teenager drawn into a scheme by adult handlers. The Ukrainian state must prove not only that the arson happened, but also the level of awareness: did the children understand they were working for the enemy, or were they carrying out a dangerous task for money?
That boundary is especially important in a society exhausted by war. When the security service publishes reports of teenagers detained, even with faces blurred, the public reaction is often immediate and harsh. They are called traitors, idiots, people who will never be forgiven. The anger is understandable. But justice cannot be built on anger alone.
Chernihiv knows the cost of war without abstraction. The region has endured Russia’s advance, constant shelling, attacks on hospitals, power outages and cold. Military graves marked with flags stand near villages. Children study in shelters, and army posters hang on school walls. In such a place, any act of arson in the enemy’s interest feels like a personal insult.
Іноді після арешту підлітків за звинуваченням у саботажі, СБУ публікує їхні фотографії з розмитими обличчями в Telegram та Facebook — Джерело: Facebook
Покинуті хрести притулені до сараю на цвинтарі в рідному селі Віталія — Тома Пітер
Yet this is also precisely the kind of place where children become most vulnerable. Parents are at the front. Families are poor. Loss, anxiety, closed schools, basements instead of classrooms, constant stress and Telegram as the main window to the world create ideal recruiting ground. For Russian intelligence services, this is not incidental. It is a method.
Antonina Kharchenko, a school director in Chernihiv, looks at such children not as enemies but as students who broke under the pressure of war and poverty. Her school sends teachers into the pre-trial detention center so that minors in custody do not lose their right to education. Some teachers elsewhere refuse, seeing the children’s actions as unforgivable.
Kharchenko answers not with emotion, but with the Constitution. The right to education in Ukraine does not disappear behind bars, even during war. Her position may sound almost radical in a society where every act of sabotage can cost lives. But this is the test of the state: whether it can defend itself without destroying its own principles.
Physics teacher Hennadiy Yachnyi, who teaches teenagers in the Chernihiv detention center, speaks about them simply: they are students. He sees not agents, but children who wait for lessons, talk, grow shy, get bored, fear the future and appear to regret what they have done. In that ordinariness lies the hardest truth: war often does not draw a clean line between evil and weakness.
Vitalii grew up in a poor family on the edge of a small town. His father died of cancer. His mother takes cleaning jobs when she can. His younger brother has often been ill. The boy worked when possible and wanted to help his family. Such biographies make the phrase “easy money” dangerous. For an adult, it is a trap. For a child in wartime, it can become a sentence.
Залізничні колії проходять через село в Чернігівській області. Залізничне обладнання часто є мішенню для саботажу — Томас Пітер
After the arrests, the other boys were released on bail, but Vitalii’s family could not quickly gather about $6,000. He spent more than a year in pre-trial detention while his mother borrowed, took out a loan and begged relatives for help. In war, even bail becomes a social filter: those with money await trial at home; those without it grow up behind bars.
If the boys are convicted of sabotage, they face up to 10 years in prison. Adults convicted of similar crimes can face far harsher sentences. But for a teenager, 10 years is not only punishment. It is a lost adolescence, a broken return to society and the risk of leaving prison no longer as a confused child, but as someone permanently cut off from ordinary life.
Ukraine cannot ignore such crimes. Russia must understand that arson, terror attacks and sabotage carried out through teenagers will not remain in a gray zone. Otherwise, the enemy will only expand the scheme because it is cheap, scalable and morally poisonous. The state must protect railways, the army, energy infrastructure and the rear.
But the response cannot be only punitive. Ukraine needs stronger cases against the handlers, faster identification of recruiters, digital prevention, school outreach, support for poor families, psychological assistance and separate mechanisms for minors who caused harm without political intent.
The greatest danger is giving Russia a second victory after the crime itself. First, it uses a Ukrainian child to set a fire. Then Ukrainian society, consumed by fury, refuses to see that child as human. If that happens, the enemy damages not only equipment, but the fabric of trust inside the country.
Віталій розповідає під час допиту в слідчому ізоляторі, перед тим як його звільнили під заставу. Він говорив тихо, ворушачи руками — Томас Пітер
Justice in wartime must be strict, but not blind. It must distinguish between a recruited adult saboteur and a teenager bought for the price of a school backpack. It must punish the act, while also seeing the mechanism that created it.
Vitalii’s case has no simple ending. He has been released on bail, but his trial continues. His mother prepares food at home beneath a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers, while the boy stands nearby in silence, his head lowered. This is not a scene of excuse. It is a scene of a country that must fight the enemy and recover its own children at the same time.
Ukraine is living through a war in which Russia attacks not only cities, power stations and the front. It attacks the weak points of society: poverty, loneliness, childish trust, exhaustion and uncontrolled digital space. The answer to that attack must be broader than a sentence.
Because Ukraine’s real defeat would not be that a teenager stumbled. The real defeat would be if the state, while defending itself from betrayal, stopped distinguishing between the child who was recruited and the enemy who used him.
