The FSB arrested four teenagers, 14-17 years old, who were allegedly preparing to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline following a tip from “Ukrainian curators.” Minors face 20 years

A video of the detention and interrogation of four teenagers in the Lipetsk region was published today by the FSB and news agencies.

The teenagers are first harshly detained by FSB operatives, pulling them out of a car stopped by a traffic police inspector. Then the confessions of all four are published.

They speak in the language of protocols, as if from a carbon copy, that the “curators” introduced themselves in correspondence as Ukrainians and conveyed their assignments.

“I collaborated with a representative of the SBU, in his words. I was engaged in arson of relay cabinets, arson of transformer boxes, planned arson of locomotives, and the last task that we were assigned was to blow up gas pipes. In a preliminary conspiracy,” the teenager says to the camera immediately after his arrest.

The latest task from the “Ukrainian curators,” the FSB specifies, is to allegedly blow up the onshore part of the Druzhba oil pipeline (in the Lebedyansky district) with the help of an explosive device, which unknown persons hid in advance in a cache and gave the teenagers the coordinates.

The teenagers allegedly obtained an IED and were already detained with it, “without having time to carry out their criminal intent.”

It is not reported who placed the IED in the cache. Screenshots of the “target” - the above-ground part of the oil pipeline - were allegedly found in the correspondence of the detainees, to which the security forces quickly gained access.

Speaker of the Investigative Committee Svetlana Petrenko said that the detainees face up to 20 years under articles of preparation for sabotage by a group of persons by prior conspiracy. Searches were carried out at the places of residence of the arrested minors.

The age limit for responsibility for these crimes in Russia was recently lowered to just 14 years.