13 November 2025
by Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Slovo zashchite
On 11 November, the State Duma passed a bill lowering the age of criminal responsibility for sabotage from 16 to 14 years. The law also toughens punishment for involving minors in terrorism or sabotage, and abolishes the statute of limitations for all sabotage-related offences. Under the new rules, those convicted of sabotage cannot be given suspended sentences. Anyone already convicted of sabotage will not be eligible to apply for parole until they have served at least three-quarters of their term.
Two clear messages have been sent to the Russian public: crime is becoming ‘younger’, and the state is tightening its response to threats against national security. What counts as ‘sabotage’ in the eyes of Russian law-enforcement is already well known.
Nariman Dzhelyal, Deputy Chair of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, was charged with sabotage over alleged involvement in a stash of explosives that he had no idea whatsoever about. Confessions from the Akhtemov brothers were extracted under torture in the Simferopol remand prison. Dzhelyal received 17 years; the Akhtemov brothers 15 and 13. Dzhelyal was later exchanged and now serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey. The brothers remain behind bars.
Aleksandr Dimitrenko from Voronezh region held, according to the verdict, ‘strongly negative views of the Russian President’s policy towards Ukraine’. During a search, police ‘found’ explosives and detonators. Before the search he was beaten with a plastic bag over his head until he recorded a video admission stating he planned to go to Ukraine to fight. Only after that did officers ‘discover’ the evidence in a separate room. His sentence: 23 years.
Vasily Zharkov from Moscow region ‘entered into correspondence with two representatives of the Free Russia Legion,’ took photographs of a military facility, and purchased – in ordinary shops – motor oil and barbecue fire-starter fluid. The court concluded this showed intent to ‘disable a communications facility by arson’ – a mobile relay tower. No act of sabotage took place: nothing burned, no one was harmed. Yet Zharkov received 19 years for ‘sabotage’, plus treason and terrorism.
According to the human rights organisation First Department, more than 500 people in Russia have been prosecuted for sabotage or arson attacks on military enlistment offices, with FSB agents often acting as provocateurs. Until now, such cases mostly targeted adults – but the door is now wide open for prosecution of teenagers. The bill’s sponsors included 419 deputies from all State Duma factions. Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya boasted that this was a record for the number of co-signatories on a single bill. A unanimity worthy of Stalinist times.
We are witnessing the return of the legal norms of the Stalinist terror. It is worth remembering that on 7 April 1935, the Soviet government adopted the decree ‘On Measures to Combat the Criminality of Minors’. It was signed by Stalin’s henchmen: Mikhail Kalinin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Ivan Akulov, and published in Izvestiya the following day. The decree lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years for a number of offences and permitted ‘all measures of criminal punishment’ – including execution.
A month earlier, on 19 March 1935, the People’s Commissar for Defence, Kliment Voroshilov, wrote to Stalin, Molotov and Kalinin proposing the death penalty for children, citing statistics on child crime in Moscow – in particular an incident where a nine-year-old boy injured the son of a deputy prosecutor. It was this letter from the ‘hero of the Civil War’ that led directly to the decree.
We do not know who initiated the discussion of today’s cannibalistic bill in the Duma, but there is no doubt the Federation Council will approve it – and President Putin will sign it.
Translated by James Lofthouse
