Children as young as 13 are being groomed online through encrypted messaging apps, such as Telegram, to attack their own country, incentivised by payments of just £700.
“In the Kharkiv region, Russia has been offering money to young people to burn military vehicles, to put bombs next to police police departments, beside railway infrastructure and under the cars of Government officials,” said Serhii Bolvinov, 42, head of investigations for the national police in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
“They pay teenagers through cryptocurrency. They are sent instructions for what to do and are given a list of the scale of payments on offer. They get about $1,000 for an arson attack.
“We have had one case where a 13-year-old boy was paid by Russia to burn a military vehicle, in another instance, a girl of 13 was hired to set fire to railway equipment.
He added: “It’s part of Russia’s hybrid war. They are doing many bad things, not only on the battlefield.
“It can be very difficult to find out who exactly is responsible for sending these messages because you can’t get a lot of details from a Telegram user account.”
However, the police chief felt it was particularly cynical for Vladimir Putin’s military to target children in such a way.
“These are vulnerable teenagers who are tempted by the money,” he said, “the kids don’t realise what they are doing and Russia offers sums that are substantial for someone of that age,” he added.
Unlike Britain, where parents face no consequences if their child commits a heinous act of violence, Bolvinov explained that his force is duty-bound to explore why the teenager embarked on the path they did.
“We investigate not only what the kids have done, but also what the parents did to protect them because, by Ukrainian law, we sometimes also have to punish the parents,” he said.
Bolvinov, who has been with the police since he turned 16, has had his job turned upside down since the full-scale invasion by Russia three years ago.
As Putin’s forces launched their brutal attack on Kharkiv and occupied large parts of the region, they left a trail of destruction in their wake.
Bolvinov is the man tasked with holding those responsible accountable for the many war crimes that took place.
In December, the UK Government pledged £4.5 million to support Kyiv’s efforts to document, investigate and prosecute war crimes.
The money will fund the work of hundreds of police officers, investigators, lawyers and judges working on complex investigations into the soldiers and commanders responsible for “unspeakable atrocities” committed by Vladimir Putin’s troops.
Last week, a report by the international human rights foundation, Global Rights Compliance, claimed Vladimir Putin should be indicted on war crime charges for a plot to cripple Ukraine’s global grain exports.
The organisation said there was “significant evidence” of an orchestrated campaign to destroy the nation’s agricultural economy by targeting its export capabilities.
