Crimean resident Kyrylo Shevlin, 19, has allegedly set fire to cars on the orders of the Ukrainian special services. To “atone for his guilt”, he allegedly agreed to join a “special military operation” against Ukraine. Still from the video of the Crimean SMERSH Telegram channel

161 teenagersin the Donetsk “republic” have been “convicted” under criminal articles, 48 of whom have been sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment, the propagandist Donetsk News Agency (DAN) reported with reference to the “Defence staff” of the Donetsk “republic”, labelling the “convicts” as “radicals.”

The report did not specify the period during which the teenagers were “convicted.” Presumably, it refers to the time after the Russian annexation of the occupied parts of four regions of Ukraine on September 30, 2022. According to the report, 263 teenagers are registered in the “juvenile affairs units” of the police in the “republic,” “16 of them for extremist actions.” In 2024, 19 teenagers were registered.

According to the “Defence staff,” these data were presented at the “introductory” meeting of the “interagency working group” on “prevention of juvenile delinquency,” which took place on October 15 in occupied Mariupol. A system of administrative supervision of children is being formed in all occupied territories – in particular, so-called “commissions on minors’ affairs” are being formed in the occupation municipalities, which will be responsible, among other things, for allegedly combating child homelessness and neglect.

The DAN wrote that the participants of the meeting stressed that “it is necessary to particularly monitor teenagers raised in single-parent families with working mothers. A single parent, overworked, simply cannot know what the child is doing.”

The report also mentions the “detection” of 217 teenagers who allegedly belonged to “suicidal and destructive Internet groups.” It was stressed in the meeting, according to the DAN, that “the Ukrainian side in the SVO (“special military operation,” as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is called in Russia. – Occupied) is trying to involve children in terrorist activities via the Internet, not only in the new regions, but throughout Russia.” Some teenagers in the occupied part of the Donetsk region allegedly had homemade weapons seized from them “before they could use them.”

As Occupied reported, in September, at least 30 people were detained on political grounds in the occupied territories of Ukraine. At least 29 more people were “convicted” in political cases. Among them are young men aged 19 and 20 who allegedly planned a sabotage in cooperation with Ukrainian special services in the occupied part of the Kherson region.