One late afternoon last September, a 17-year-old Dutch boy was just starting his homework in his family’s house in Rotterdam when there was a knock at the front door.
When his father opened it, eight police officers wearing balaclavas rushed past him and stormed upstairs to the boy’s bedroom. They were there to arrest the teenager on charges of rendering services to a foreign country.
The details that have emerged since have shocked both his family and Europe’s security community: the boy is accused of having been recruited by Russian agents on Telegram to spy on law-enforcement organisations in The Hague using a “sniffer” device, which intercepts wifi networks.
Through interviews with police and intelligence officials in six countries across Europe and the Middle East, The Financial Times established that this 17-year-old is one of a growing number of teenagers who are being recruited online by hostile states for spying and sabotage.
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The boy – “an avid gamer who is good with computers”, according to an interview with his father in De Telegraaf – is now awaiting trial. His father, who described his son as “naive”, remains bewildered. “We raise our children to prepare them for all kinds of dangers in life: smoking, vaping, alcohol and drugs,” he told the Dutch newspaper. “But not for something like this.”
Russia and Iran have long enlisted proxies to perform hostile acts on European soil, but targeting minors represents a new twist on their subversive gig economy.
The tactic first emerged in Ukraine, where teenagers have been recruited online for sabotage, espionage and to spread propaganda. Moscow has since sought underage foot soldiers west towards Poland, the Netherlands and the UK. Tehran, spotting an opportunity to accelerate operations against Iranian dissidents in Europe and sow chaos in Israel, was quick to follow suit.
“Hostile states are absolutely trying to target teenagers,” says Dominic Murphy, who stepped down six weeks ago as head of the London Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command, which oversees investigations into national security threats across England and Wales. “I was surprised by the scale of the challenge because it really seemed to come very suddenly, 18 months ago. I was then equally surprised by the volume of youngsters that were ready and willing to engage online ... and how quickly this was moving to real-world activity.”
Ukrainian intelligence officials say 21 per cent of those arrested for collaborating with Russia in 2025 were teenagers. A significant proportion of the arrests made in connection with anti-Semitic attacks across Europe claimed by the Iranian-backed militia group Ashab al-Yamin – also known by the longer name Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or Hayi – involve local perpetrators in countries such as Britain, France and the Netherlands who are under 18.
The recruitments follow a similar pattern: young people are usually approached on online channels which are well hidden and hard to track: from Telegram to TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Discord. They are offered money, commonly cryptocurrencies, in exchange for completing tasks. Their recruiters depend on anonymity; many work for criminal groups which, like cyber hackers, may be independent from the state but co-opted by intelligence agencies for covert operations.
Gaming sites – the most widely consumed entertainment media among 13- to 24-year-olds – have become an obvious hunting ground for potential saboteurs with a proven interest in problem solving.
In Ukraine, the chat function in the popular online game World of Tanks is commonly used as a recruitment portal, from which agents then move the conversation to Telegram. Some state-backed agents, especially those working for Russia, also invoke the mission format and “quest” mentality of online games to entice young people to move beyond the virtual battlefield to real-world action. It is, says one western military official, “like a game of Pokémon Go, but with air-defence systems”.
Preventing minors from being drawn into this net has rapidly become a top priority for Europol, the European Union’s intelligence and crime-fighting agency. “We have a young generation which is slightly detached from their parents, that are educated online, often by social media or gaming platforms,” the agency’s director, Catherine De Bolle said in an interview conducted just before she stepped down from her post last month.
“A young person who is still developing an ethical and moral compass, who hasn’t found their place in society, is psychologically more vulnerable to approaches by somebody who gives them attention, who gives them care, who engineers a way into their life and gains their trust,” she says.
Yet the states view the teenagers they employ as disposable. There is little risk for them if the operations fail, and upside only if they succeed. Any connection to Russia or Iran is hard for European intelligence agencies to prove, and for the aggressor states, entirely deniable. The jeopardy lies with the recruits, such as the Dutch teenager, whose lives will be irrevocably changed if they convert online tasking into an actual mission.
The result, according to police and intelligence officials, is that Russia and Iran are exploiting a generation of digital natives to further their aims in so-called hybrid warfare – the no-man’s land between peace and armed conflict.
“The anonymity of the online environment gives [minors] the ability to engage in what they might see as edgy behaviour,” says one British security official. “They might not see the impact or real-world consequences.”
Just over a year ago, Ukrainian police arrested two groups of suspected Russian agents who were covertly photographing air-defence systems on the outskirts of Kharkiv.
At first, this looked like standard espionage, directed by Moscow’s FSB spy agency to advance its conflict in eastern Ukraine. But the perpetrators were not Russian infiltrators or trained agents but local teenagers.
The children, all aged 15 or 16, had been unwittingly recruited by the FSB to collect intelligence under the guise of a “quest” game – a citywide scavenger hunt in which participants compete to finish a list of challenges.
They received geographical co-ordinates of the defence systems from their Russian handlers via a chatroom, according to details of the operation uncovered by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency. They were asked to travel to the area, take photos and videos and provide a description; Moscow later used this information to carry out air strikes on Kharkiv. Other tasks given to the groups included setting fire to Ukrainian military vehicles.
SBU intelligence officials say that far from being the exception, Russia’s recruitment of minors, and even children – which began a year into the conflict – is now the norm. The Kremlin widened its net after Ukrainians who might previously have had some Russian sympathies became alienated by the war. Enlisting young Ukrainians had the benefit of destabilising the country internally, by co-opting the younger generation to subvert the national war effort.
For Moscow, Ukrainian minors represent “the line of least resistance”, says Laura Brady, a Ukraine-Russia analyst at the Earendel Associates consultancy. “A younger person will be less curious, perhaps, about why they’re being asked to do something,” she says. “They’ll be cheaper to employ. There’ll be less caution about going through with an activity which might seem a bit odd. Children are fundamentally more impulsive.”
Russian agents’ methods include positioning themselves as peacemakers. One SBU official describes how a Ukrainian teenager might be enticed to burn down local military recruitment offices and their vehicles on the basis that this would prevent their brother, father or other male relative from being forcibly mobilised into the army.
According to the SBU, the youngest Ukrainians to have been recruited by Moscow were just 11 – one in Kyiv, the other in Odesa. These children, both boys, were tasked with burning cars and setting fire to electricity boxes in residential buildings.
Older teenagers are typically given an escalating ladder of activities, akin to training. They might be asked to print anti-war leaflets and post them around their neighbourhood, then commit minor acts of arson, progressing to arson endangering life; and, finally, the construction and detonation of bombs.
The results can be catastrophic, not least for the perpetrators. In March last year, in the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, a 17-year-old boy died and his 15-year-old accomplice lost his legs after a bomb they had built exploded before they had reached their intended detonation site. The boys had been recruited by Russian agents on Telegram and offered $1,700 €1,470) to plant the device. SBU officials say they became unwitting suicide bombers, or what the Russian agents refer to as “single-use agents”.
Teenage recruits can expect life-changing penalties if caught. Two 14-year-old boys who set off a self-made bomb near a police station in Kyiv three months ago at the behest of a Russian recruiter were swiftly caught by the SBU. Despite their ages – and the fact that no one was harmed in the attack – they face prison sentences of up to 12 years.
The SBU now believes that Russia is scaling up its targeting efforts. Brady adds that young people who are successfully drawn into Russia’s sphere of influence are often challenged to recruit their peers through TikTok or Telegram or their gaming platforms, “so the recruits themselves are force multipliers”.
The first signs that Moscow’s hunt for young saboteurs was reaching farther into Europe were seen in the countries along Ukraine’s border.
In Poland, teenage Ukrainians were caught spraying anti-Polish slogans on national monuments. In Latvia, Moscow has co-opted young people to distribute pro-Russian propaganda leaflets and to attack cars and buildings belonging to the Ukrainian diaspora. In Lithuania, a 17-year-old Ukrainian national, Daniil Bardadim, set fire to an Ikea store in Vilnius in 2024 on behalf of Russian security services. He pleaded guilty to arson and is currently serving a three-year prison sentence.
Ukrainian intelligence officers, who have become adept at detecting the threat to minors, are now advising European allies on how to counter it. While Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, was masterminding the approaches to Ukrainian teenagers, the GRU (its military intelligence directorate) and SVR (the foreign intelligence agency) are behind the operations to recruit minors further afield, the SBU believes.
At the headquarters of Latvia’s VDD domestic security service in Riga, the agency’s director general, Normunds Mežviets, describes how Moscow’s agents guide novice recruits through a thicket of ever-riskier activities.
The first task might be just to set fire to a car. “You need guts to do it at night time, when you are alone. You have to buy a liquid, to make this Molotov cocktail, then you have to look for the target, do some reconnaissance,” Mežviets says. “The risk is not very high, but there is lots of pressure. You are nervous about how to approach this target, you have to then run away, to hide yourself. It takes something from the person, especially if this person is not experienced.”
Latvian saboteurs might graduate to targeting cars with Ukrainian number plates, then Ukrainian trucks, then set fire to a property belonging to a Ukrainian émigré. The next step would be attacking critical infrastructure – an army base, where there is a fence, surveillance and security staff. “By this time, you are emotionally and psychologically prepared to do it,” Mežviets explains. Often these more sophisticated attacks are reserved for older recruits in their 20s or 30s.
Russian agents invent a range of cover stories to explain why a task needs to be done. “There is some kind of legend. They’ll say, ‘This is a bad person who owes money to someone ... so to punish him, here is €500. Why not burn down his car?’” says Mežviets.
The VDD chief has little sympathy for those who are taken in. “If you are not a total blockhead, sooner or later you will understand very well what you are doing,” he says.
Moscow’s agents are now recruiting teenagers in western Europe, including the UK.
These cases are particularly hard to track because they reach public attention only if they come to court and there are multiple reporting restrictions around any offences involving minors.
However, the Met has acknowledged that it is arresting teenagers for sabotage and reconnaissance activities. “Children and young people are vulnerable to ... hostile activity,” Vicki Evans, the UK’s senior national co-ordinator for counterterrorism policing, admitted last year. “It is a huge concern for us.”
Murphy, the former Metropolitan Police commander, recalls that about 18 months ago the force started to notice youngsters “conducting hostile reconnaissance for a variety of different reasons on behalf of a foreign state”, citing both Russia and Iran. “We were increasingly seeing younger people engaging in what looked almost like a parallel universe.”
The Met has previously released data showing that 20 per cent of the people it arrests in counterterrorism cases are aged 17 or under. Murphy estimates that a similar proportion of minors are now being arrested by the force in connection with national security activity.
Just last week, a court at London’s Old Bailey heard that a Norwegian teenager had been hired by a Swedish organised-crime group used by the Iranian regime, to murder an unknown target in the UK.
The alleged perpetrator, Johannes Natland, had only just turned 18 when he flew into Manchester airport and was directed by his handlers to a hidden stash of weapons and a stolen car, according to the prosecution. He was arrested in a hotel room in west Yorkshire before he had carried out the hit. A search of his room revealed a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and 12 rounds of live ammunition. Natland denies a charge of conspiracy to murder. The trial is ongoing.
Investigators at Europol have observed teenagers across the continent being lured to action in similar ways.
Nefarious actors congregate in online forums such as extremist right-wing Discord groups and Telegram channels. “It could be a Swedish organised crime group trafficking cocaine, or a terrorist recruiter, or a state looking for people to carry out hybrid attacks,” says De Bolle, the former Europol director. “All these different actors have the same interests in trying to find young people and give them tasks.”
The Dutch 17-year-old arrested in Rotterdam last year, along with an accomplice of the same age, is accused of using a wifi-intercepting technology to eavesdrop on government and law-enforcement buildings in The Hague, including Europol’s own headquarters.
One of the boys was approached on Telegram by a hacking group affiliated with the Russian government and offered payment in exchange for their services. The two teenage suspects are still awaiting a court date.
For De Bolle, the exploitation of minors by criminals of all types is Europol’s top priority and a rapidly growing risk. Children massing on social media and gaming platforms are, she says, “super simple” to identify and recruit.
“For the groups who are using them – if they are successful, fine, if they are partly successful, fine, if this person is killed, so what? And if this person is arrested, so what? It’s a fire-and-forget weapon,” De Bolle adds. This is, she says, “the criminal adaptation of our throwaway society”.
A gambit born in the heat of the Ukraine war is now being deployed further east, in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
In March this year, a 14-year-old boy in Tel Aviv was charged with making contact with a foreign agent and passing intelligence to the enemy. His path to criminality, according to Israeli prosecutors, had begun 11 months earlier, when he responded to an Iranian agent on Telegram who was offering crypto payments in exchange for a range of subversive activities.
He went on to capture video footage of Tel Aviv’s Kirya military headquarters, to film the damage caused by Iranian missile strikes at two locations, and scrawl graffiti messages across Tel Aviv, prosecutors said. He was paid more than $1,170 (€1,012) for his actions, spread across four separate digital wallets.
Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic counter-intelligence agency, was already trying to alert the country to this danger. Last summer, the agency spearheaded the release of an information notice to parents, warning that Israeli children and teenagers had “encountered seemingly innocent messages online” asking them to photograph buildings and facilities, gather information, spray hateful graffiti and identify sensitive sites.
These requests, explained Shin Bet, were appearing on Facebook, Telegram, Instagram and TikTok. “An investigation shows that these calls are being made by hostile Iranian elements ... with the aim of recruiting Israeli minors for espionage activities.”
Intelligence experts suggest Tehran is designing its operations straight from Moscow’s playbook. “Iran deeply distrusts Russia, but in situations where they have a common enemy, their interests align,” says one western security official. “And in those circumstances, the GRU is definitely teaching the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] – in drone warfare, in hybrid activity and in sabotage.”
A former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, argues that hostile states are tapping into a sense of dissatisfaction among the younger generation whose childhoods have been disrupted by conflict and Covid lockdowns.
“These recruitments are successful because Tehran has identified correctly that children in Israel beneath the age of 18 have been growing until now in the aftermath of Covid and October 7th, and this current war with Iran, and they feel to some extent that they are not heard and not listened to.”
The former officer adds that digital payments give aspiring recruits the illusion of secrecy. “If you look at the payments themselves, because they’re conducted in crypto, the children think that it’s easier for them to get away with it,” the former officer says. “The minute they open the digital wallet by themselves and receive the funds, they can have their own equivalent economy without their parents knowing. So for them it’s gaining independence from their parents.”
Iran-backed groups appear to be using the same strategy in Europe. The involvement of minors has been a striking feature of recent anti-Semitic attacks this spring by Hayi, the militia group that the US justice department has called a front to carry out the terrorist goals of Kata’ib Hizbullah, Hizbullah and the IRGC.
Teenagers across Britain, France and the Netherlands have been arrested in connection with the incidents claimed by Hayi. In France, three of the four alleged perpetrators of a foiled bomb plot in Paris in March are aged either 16 or 17. In the Netherlands, four young men aged between 17 and 19 are under investigation for setting fire to a synagogue in Rotterdam, also in March.
In the UK – where the number of Hayi-related attacks has been far higher – the three people charged in connection with an arson attack in March on Jewish community-run Hatzola ambulances in north London are aged 17, 19 and 20.
A 17-year-old boy has already pleaded guilty to arson after a fire at a synagogue in northwest London in late April. And most recently, two men of 19 and 21 and a boy of 16 are accused of attempting to firebomb the offices of Volant Media, the parent company of a Persian TV station in London. The youngest perpetrator has now been remanded into local-authority care.
A security official with expertise in Iranian external operations says many of the London attacker profiles bear the same hallmarks as those observed in Tel Aviv by Shin Bet.
“In many instances, agents appear to have initially self-recruited online using apps such as Facebook, Telegram and Snapchat before being allocated handlers, most likely in the IRGC or ministry of intelligence and security,” the official says, adding that they had noted “near-identical recruitment patterns in both Israel and the UK”.
The first step to countering this threat is greater awareness – especially among parents, who are typically ignorant of the risks their children might encounter online.
Inevitably, Ukraine, whose citizens live daily with the consequences of Russian military aggression, is further ahead on this front. The SBU launched a public campaign two years ago warning people about being approached by strangers online promising “easy money” for “simple tasks”. The SBU now visits schools to teach pupils about the lawbreaking activities – and prison sentences – which have ensnared their peers.
Further west, the challenge is harder: families who have never experienced the realities of hybrid conflict simply do not expect the GRU or the IRGC to be reaching into their children’s lives.
“The public might understand the danger of young people getting drawn into terrorism in some way,” says the former Met commander Murphy. “But that same concern needs to exist for young people conducting activity on behalf of foreign states.”
The proliferation of new platforms and online ecosystems, which are central to teenagers’ social interactions but often alien to their parents, is another significant hurdle to effective oversight.
Just as the SBU has seen Russian agents contacting young people through the World of Tanks online game, British and Swedish intelligence officials say gaming platforms are being used for recruitment – both by terrorists and hostile states.
“Criminal gangs, terrorists and state actors will inevitably be drawn to the same online spaces, including gaming platforms, because this is where young people are gathering and communicating in large numbers,” says one official from MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence agency. “Whether you are looking for followers, proxies or disposable agents, you might initially make contact on gaming sites or gaming-adjacent platforms before continuing to a secure communications app.”
Chat platforms such as Discord – commonly used by gamers to communicate while they are playing – have multiple functions, including text, audio and video calls across large communities. “If you think your kids are on Discord and just chatting to their mates from school, then you’re likely to be wrong,” the MI5 official warns.
A spokesperson for Discord described radicalisation and recruitment into violence as “complex societal challenges” which required “a broader response across platforms and offline”. The company works to “identify and disrupt this behaviour where it appears, including removing content, banning users and working with law enforcement when there is a credible risk of real-world harm”, the spokesperson added.
Jonathan Hall, the UK’s independent reviewer of state threats legislation, argues that a wider public conversation is needed about how young people use these platforms. Just as Australia’s social-media ban for under-16s has prompted an international debate about the addictive algorithms designed by US tech companies, he suggests that the online dangers posed by state recruiters – who are using web platforms to entrap and coerce children – deserve attention too.
“The internet is a portal into young people. It’s incredibly powerful. It provokes strong emotions and engagement and commitment, and you’ve got manipulative people in Silicon Valley and manipulative people sitting in Tehran and Moscow. As a society, we’re beginning to understand the first category,” he says. “But I don’t think we’ve started to think about the second category at all.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
