"Cold calculations by enemy intelligence agencies": Tomsk teachers are being warned about children being recruited for sabotage through social media.
Department of Education Tomsk area sent out a request to educational institutions to inform class teachers and parents about the “threat under the guise of a game,” they said. NotMoscow Teachers. Although the cards don't call for switching to Max, the teachers themselves believe this is primarily done to highlight the dangers of all other messaging apps.
The cards distributed claim that certain curators are gaining the trust of schoolchildren, creating social media channels, and inventing virtual games to make quick money.
"It all starts with simple tasks: posting flyers, painting graffiti. Then the teenagers are offered more challenging tasks: setting fire to a military registration and enlistment office, damaging a car with a Z-symbol, or organizing an attack at a school," the cards read.
The authors of the cards cite news reports of teenagers being tried for participating in sabotage, terrorist attacks, and treason: "These are not spontaneous actions. Behind them lies the cold calculation of enemy intelligence agencies who are deliberately hunting our children."
Since 2022, a wave of arrests and detentions for acts of sabotage has swept across Russia, often targeting teenagers and young adults. According to the official version, promoted by the FSB, the Investigative Committee, and now the education department, the sabotage is being perpetrated by professional recruiters from the Ukrainian intelligence services.
This theory allows the authorities to avoid acknowledging that even teenagers can hold anti-war stances and act on ideological grounds, to create the image of an external enemy against which Russia has been defending itself for four years, and to justify harsh sentences: if a teenager is an agent of enemy intelligence services, then they can and should be tried to the full extent of adult criminal charges. Not to mention the fact that any arrest under extremism charges adorns the relevant reports of Russian security forces, whose infiltration of youth groups and the creation of "cases" for reporting purposes is an established practice.
For example, the "New Greatness" case was based on testimony from security officials who had infiltrated a group of young people. The officials invented a charter and rented a meeting space where they proposed to participants in an ordinary Telegram chat that they overthrow the government by force. Nine people were later charged with organizing and participating in an extremist group.
