State propaganda against reality: The story of Russian teenagers accused of terrorism

The parents of 10 teenagers being held in custody in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar for setting fire to railway equipment have launched a campaign to have the terrorism charges their children face reduced to the much less serious charges of property damage.

In an increasingly rare act of public defiance, the families argue that their children had no intention of harming Russia and simply wanted to earn some extra money.

“How did you do it? With gasoline? Your head isn’t black!” A man with a black face hovers over a skinny teenager in shorts and a T-shirt. Nearby, a dark-haired woman, the teenager’s mother, rests her cheek on the palm of her hand. She looks even more confused than her son. The kitchen they are in is clean. A Kremlin calendar hangs on the wall.

This is a scene from the documentary “Betrayal” by the state propaganda channel Russia-1, in which propagandist Andrey Medvedev talks about the danger posed to Russians by young domestic terrorists. “Your son is involved in a crime, an attempt to commit a terrorist act by setting fire to a train relay box,” a red-haired investigator, whose face is not shown, explains to the boy’s parents.

“I’ll kill him myself, give me 5 minutes with him.”

The camera shows 15-year-old Vadim and his father Valery, who asked not to reveal their last name, as well as the family's mother, Margarita. Margarita told Veter that she had not given permission for her young son to be filmed or broadcast, but it all happened so quickly that day, July 30, when a film crew and officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) forced their way into her home in Krasnodar and handcuffed her son Vadim. The parents were told that Vadim was a terrorist.

Moped money

Vadim's family moved from Kazakhstan to Krasnodar in 2019. Vadim's life, like that of many local teenagers, revolved largely around his motorcycle. Although he was not interested in politics, he participated in donation campaigns for schools for Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

To earn some money, Vadim worked at a tree nursery near his home, where he was paid 2,200 rubles (24 euros) for 12-hour shifts starting at 4 a.m., from which he would return home sunburned, dehydrated, and hungry.

Last year, however, he came across a much more lucrative offer being made on a local Telegram forum. “They wrote that the job was to set fire to a certain object for 25,000 rubles [275 euros],” Vadim says in the video. Although he wanted to make some easy money, he was reluctant to commit a crime. However, he ultimately decided that he would set the fire, then send the client video evidence of doing so, before quickly extinguishing the flames.

Burnt grass

Vadim was joined in the venture by his friend, 17-year-old Ilya. The boys took gasoline, antifreeze, and sand. Vadim planned to pour the antifreeze into the relay cabinet before setting it on fire, thinking that this would prevent it from burning.

"There are messages between Vadim and his friend where he writes: 'I know how to do it so that there are no consequences and no one gets hurt.' First they spray the cupboard with antifreeze, because it shouldn't burn and acts as a coolant. So they figured out how not to burn the cupboard. They set fire to the dry grass. They recorded the whole thing on video. It literally lasts six to eight seconds. Then they threw sand to put it all out," says Margarita.

Only the paint suffered minor damage from the burn. Russian Railways later estimated the fire damage at 1,149 rubles (13 euros). Vadim sent the video to the customer, who transferred the agreed amount. Three days later he was arrested.

“Journalists came. I asked them what they were filming,” Margarita says. “This is for the police. Don’t worry, it won’t go anywhere else.” Then the FSB came in with guns, in masks. My son’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Did you set the fire?” “I did.” He admitted it immediately. The house was searched, everything was recorded, all our phones were confiscated. They saw the antifreeze and asked what it was. “I threw antifreeze.” This was a mitigating circumstance. The case materials contain expert analyses confirming the presence of antifreeze and sand, but this was not taken into account. They asked us if an act of arson had been committed. “That means you are a terrorist,” Margarita continued.

Vadim’s accomplice, Ilya, was placed in a juvenile detention center with him, however, when he turned 18 in January, he was transferred to a regular detention center. Another Russia-1 documentary, “Playing with Fire,” shows him in custody as detectives tell his mother that he was following orders from the Ukrainians, to which she replies: “I’ll kill him myself, give me 5 minutes with him.”

Margarita was told her son had been contacted by a Ukrainian, although the investigation revealed that the person who ordered the attack had been sending messages from Canada. The case file only provides a nickname, Cactus, with an avatar depicting a grave. He transferred money to the teenager’s account using cryptocurrency.

Packaging heat

At Krasnodar’s Detention Center No. 1, where they are known as “politicians,” there are at least 10 teenagers awaiting trial for terrorism and sabotage. The juvenile center also holds drug addicts and minors accused of theft, as Margarita discovered when she tried to visit her son, despite investigators forbidding her from doing so due to the severity of the charges against him.

One of the other detainees is 15-year-old Timofey Slipchenko, whose story is strikingly similar to Vadim's. Last May, Timofey, who was 14 at the time, received a call from his 16-year-old friend Yaroslav, who offered him some work at a construction site, which he gladly accepted.

“We let our son go to work. He had started earning pocket money at the age of 10, distributing leaflets or washing dishes. This is what he wanted. I think this is normal for boys. … I asked him how late he would work and he said it was just a few hours. I said okay,” said his mother, Natalia Slipchenko.

The boys went to the railway line, where Yaroslav told Timofey that there had never been any construction work and that they were going to set fire to what he said was a dismantled transformer shed.

"Yaroslav was lied to. He said: 'Don't worry. It doesn't work, nothing will happen.' Yaroslav was tough and Timofei was afraid of him, and he had a rubber bullet pistol with him. Timofei was scared and stayed during the filming. And now he is classified as a terrorist," says Natalia.

The transformer hangar was completely burned down when the boys set it on fire.

Caught in a trap

The next day, Timofey went with his family to his grandmother's village to celebrate May 9, when Russians celebrate the Soviet victory in World War II. He had not told his family about the incident.

“That evening, the FSB came to meet us in the village. The officer said: ‘Destroy him!’ I shouted: ‘Don’t touch him!’ I wouldn’t let them touch my child. They took us back home to Krasnodar, did a search, but found nothing, took his phone and the things he wore to work. And his computer,” Natalia recalls.

"They won't tell the truth about us on TV. These are good kids! Mine is a cadet, an athlete and a patriot. But for some reason he is now also a terrorist."

By evening, Yaroslav had also been detained. Two months later, the names of both boys were added to the Russian government's list of terrorists and extremists.

Timofey's mother believes her son was found so quickly because of the train's camera traps and cell phone data. "I looked at the messages on Telegram. There was nothing about the relay cabinets in it. It just said, let's go to work. The only thing Timofey wrote was 'Where's my money?' At that point, Yaroslav transferred the money to him," she says.

Although Timofey had no academic talent, he actively participated in extracurricular activities, enrolling in the cadet ranks and collecting donations for the Russian army. He also took Thai boxing lessons, but still was unable to defend himself from his classmates, his mother says. The constant bullying made him lose interest in studying.

He worked part-time after school and eventually managed to buy a moped, something Natalia says she would never have been able to buy for him, as the family had no disposable income.

Natalia is wary of journalists in general, not least because “Betrayal” portrayed the boys as being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence operatives, leaving out the fact that they were tricked into committing arson. “They won’t tell the truth about us on TV,” she says, adding: “These are good kids! Mine is a cadet, an athlete and a patriot. But for some reason he is now also a terrorist.”

Children's Day

Margarita, Natalia and other relatives of the young Krasnodar “terrorists” held a group conversation with a total of 10 families. The group also went to meet with Tatyana Kovalyova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Krasnodar region, and asked her to ease the conditions in which their children are being held and allow them family visits.

“We were finally allowed to see our children after we started going to the authorities as a group. The first time we went, the woman at the reception came out and said, ‘What is this? Children’s Day?’ We were filled with tears that we were finally able to see our children after so many months,” recalls Margarita.

"Children aged 14-16 are still very far from politics. If a person has no ideology, how can he be a terrorist? This is arson for mercenary reasons."

“All the heads of the institution were there. We complained about the state of the place – there are cockroaches and bed bugs, the food is terrible, they are not given time in the yard… and because of the unsanitary conditions, everyone has herpes. There is also no air conditioning, and in Krasnodar the temperature can reach up to 40 degrees Celsius in the summer.”

The cells have eight beds and reveille is at 6 a.m. If you sleep all the time, you miss your only chance to take a walk outside. Once a month, a school teacher comes to give study assignments, although, as Margarita says, it is impossible to really learn anything in such conditions.

“They're just rotting in there,” says Natalia. “If they were given house arrest, they could at least be home-schooled.” However, she has no doubt who is to blame and accuses Ukrainians of “deliberately criminalizing” her son's generation.

In fact, Natalia had no qualms when Russian lawmakers voted last year to lower the age of criminal responsibility for sabotage from 16 to 14. “This is the only way our government can punish children so that they don’t get involved. There was no deterrent before.”

Writing errors

Margarita and other families from Krasnodar have written a petition demanding that their children be charged with something other than terrorism, for which they could face prison sentences of 10 years to life in prison. The crimes committed can also be classified as destruction or damage to property and damage to transport equipment, punishable by a fine or community service.

"They are neither terrorists nor criminals, just victims of circumstance and deception. No one is asking that they not be held accountable for their criminal acts. We are simply asking that they be tried for the crime they actually committed," the petition states.

“By destabilizing the state authorities! They don’t even know what these words mean. We didn’t want to harm the homeland!” says Margarita. “We don’t see our children as traitors. They didn’t set out to betray their country. Ilya wanted to fight in the ‘special military operation.’ His father died in it.”

None of the mothers believe that any of the children intentionally wanted to commit sabotage.

"Judging by the documentary, there are some who do this out of conviction, but not minors. Those approaching their 20s may be against the state, may feel like revolutionaries. They acted intentionally. But those aged 14-16 are still very far from politics. If a person has no ideology, how can he be a terrorist? This is arson for mercenary reasons," insists Margarita.

She says she regrets her reaction when the TV crews showed up at her home, when her child needed her support the most. “I said, ‘What have you done? There’s a ‘special military operation’ going on. Didn’t you know you couldn’t do this kind of thing?’” she recalls.

“There was a crowd of people, witnesses. It was scary, of course. You don't know what to say when they stick a camera in your face. And now I think, why did I do this to my child? You can't talk to children that way.”

The Geopost