Two 15-year-olds from North Ossetia were detained and given terrorism charges after the authorities accused them of planning a terrorist attack on law enforcement officers.
Russia’s Investigative Committee announced their arrest and charges on their official Telegram channel on Friday.
They claimed that the two teenagers were detained after officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs found components for an improvised explosive device in their possession. Investigators say the suspects had been studying materials for carrying out terrorist attacks between June 2024 and May 2025, using ‘specialised literature’ distributed via a closed messenger channel.
In May 2025, the boys reportedly bought materials for making explosives in the North Ossetian town of Mozdok and stored them in their homes. According to officials, their plans were disrupted by security forces before the attack could be carried out. The names of the accused have not been disclosed.
The FSB claimed that instructions for making explosives were found on the teenagers’ phones, along with messages exchanged with ‘militants located abroad’, allegedly members of an unnamed international terrorist organisation banned in Russia. The authorities also seized components for homemade explosives during the searches.
The teenagers have been charged with preparing a terrorist act as a group and undergoing training for terrorist purposes. These charges carry penalties of up to life imprisonment.
In its public statement, the FSB’s Public Relations Centre said that Ukrainian intelligence services are allegedly actively operating in the online space — including messengers like Telegram and WhatsApp — to ‘recruit young people and underage Russian citizens into illegal activity’. The FSB urged Russian citizens to remain vigilant and ‘avoid’ communicating with unknown contacts on these platforms whenever possible. However, the statement did not claim that Ukrainian services were involved in the preparation of the alleged attack.
At the time of publication, no comments from the teenagers’ lawyers or relatives were publicly available. It is also unknown whether the accused have admitted guilt.
In early July, Russian state agency RIA Novosti reported that more than 150 teenagers aged 14 to 17 had been included in the country’s official list of terrorists and extremists, citing data from the Rosfinmonitoring database.
The list currently includes 155 minors, including one 14-year-old, 23 aged 15, 46 aged 16, and 85 aged 17. The full registry of designated terrorists and extremists in Russia contains nearly 18,000 names.
Elizaveta Chukharova
