Russia has just amended its criminal code to allow prosecution of children as young as 14 years old for “sabotage” — with penalties reaching life imprisonment.

For Ukrainian teenagers living under Russian occupation, this is not a theoretical threat. It is a direct extension of a system designed to criminalize their identity.

In occupied regions, children already live under surveillance. Their phones are checked, their social media monitored, their behavior evaluated through “profiles” created by occupation authorities. Any sign of Ukrainian consciousness — reading independent media, refusing a Russian school, supporting Ukraine — is routinely treated as suspicion, disloyalty, or “extremism.”

Now these same children can be branded “terrorists.”

We have seen what this leads to. Two 16-year-old boys from occupied Berdyansk — Tigran Ohanyan and Mykyta Hanganov — were accused of sabotage, tortured, and killed. Their bodies have still not been returned to their families. Their story shows exactly how Russia applies these laws: not for justice, but for intimidation and control.

For Ukrainian children, the message is simple and terrifying:

you can be punished not for what you did, but for who you are.

This is a grave violation of international law and a direct attack on childhood itself. No state committed to human rights can ignore a system that treats teenagers as enemies of the state for resisting an occupying regime.

At Save Ukraine, we continue to rescue children from these territories, protect them from persecution, and help them heal from trauma. But thousands remain trapped under policies that now give legal cover to abuse.

The world must speak about this clearly. Criminalizing children is not security policy — it is state violence.

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