Ukraine says Russia blew up teens recruited to make bombs
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Ukraine's SBU security service said two teenagers recruited to plant bombs were blown up by Russia.
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KYIV – Ukraine’s security service on March 12 accused Russia of blowing up two teenage boys it had recruited to make bombs and plant them near a Ukrainian railway station.
Ukraine and Russia frequently accuse each other of recruiting civilians to carry out sabotage attacks in their local areas, often on railway infrastructure, offering financial incentives and grooming them through social media.
An explosion on the evening of March 11 in the centre of the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk killed a 17-year-old boy on the spot and seriously injured a 15-year-old boy, the SBU security service wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“The Russian security service blew up two of their own agents” by remotely triggering an improvised explosive device they were carrying, it said in a statement.
Prosecutors said the boys were planning to plant the device near the city’s railway station.
The SBU said Russia had recruited the local boys through Telegram channels, calling them college students “in search of ‘easy money’”.
A Russian handler rented an apartment where the teenagers learnt bomb-making and fashioned two improvised devices disguised as thermos flasks, packing them with metal nuts to maximise injuries, the SBU said.
As the boys walked together carrying one of the devices in a package, Russian security services remotely tracking them on Global Positioning System “activated the improvised explosive device”, the Ukrainian agency said.
Two bystanders suffered shrapnel wounds while another explosive device left in the rented apartment was also remotely triggered minutes later, prosecutors said, posting a picture of firefighters tackling a blaze.
The Ivano-Frankivsk region, near the border with Poland, has had critical infrastructure damaged by Russian bombing.
“All the circumstances of the crime are currently being established,” prosecutors said.
The SBU said the 15-year-old survivor would be classed as a suspect and risked charges of aiding a “terrorist act” and illegally making explosives, punishable by up to a life sentence. AFP
