On May 19, the press services of the FSB and the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) released a statement announcing that a series of terrorist attacks had been thwarted in Stavropol Krai and that nine residents of the Andropovsky District had been detained for planning attacks on police officers during the 80th anniversary of Victory Day. Seven of those detained are minors; all face up to 20 years in prison.
According to investigators, a 17-year-old resident of the Andropovsky District "expressed interest" in an international terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation. "He received an offer via instant messaging to join its ranks with the intention of subsequently committing crimes. In 2024, he took the oath of allegiance to this organization and joined it." "He also used persuasion and persuasion to recruit his relative and seven peers, aged between fourteen and sixteen, into the terrorist organization," the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) said in a statement.
"On May 9 of this year, the perpetrators planned to attack police officers during the celebration of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War in one of the municipalities of the Stavropol Territory. They were unable to carry out their plans, as the leaders were detained by the FSB the day before, followed by other members of the cell," the FSB stated.
The exact date of the arrest of the suspects is not known, but it likely occurred as early as April. The Kochubeevsky District Court of the Stavropol Territory ordered pretrial detention for the suspects for two months, the regional prosecutor's office reported. This period expired on June 25, 2025.
The ICR has released a video recording of the teenagers' interrogations. It becomes clear from these documents that they swore allegiance to a terrorist organization via voice messages, and that they didn't send them themselves. "I knew a classmate who offered to read the oath, and at the same time, he was filming it and sending a voice message to some group," said one of the detainees. "He approached my brother and me and said, 'You must repeat after me.' We repeated after him, and after that, he said we had sworn allegiance," said another.
All of those detained are charged with participating in the activities of a terrorist organization, and the instigator is also charged with organizing such activities.
It's hard not to notice that FSB reports on thwarted terrorist attacks are always full of details about how unknown individuals, most often from abroad, lure young people into criminal activity. However, nothing is said about the details of the preparation of the attacks or how the terrorists' plans were uncovered. According to a lawyer who wished to remain anonymous, all of this suggests provocation and staging. "Staging such a case and then 'solving' it is much easier than finding the real criminals, and bonuses and badges for 'preventing a terrorist attack' are guaranteed," the lawyer notes.