Teenage Terrorists. Explosive Age At The Service of Russia’s FSB

First of all, let's get the definitions right. Point one: these are not children. I mean, of course, they are someone's children. But this is where the reflexive online lamentation should stop. If your own children lost their limbs or even their lives as a result of bombing, you would have less lyrical names for the terrorists.

Besides, the second period of childhood for boys lasts from 8 to 12 years, and for girls from 8 to 11 years. That's it for this point.

The second point is even simpler. They are simply terrorists. They were quite deliberately and diligently making instruments of mass murder, realizing the meaning of their actions. This is stated in Article 258 of the Criminal Code: “Terrorist act, i.e. the use of weapons, explosion, arson or other actions that endangered human life or health or caused significant property damage...”

Special criminal liability procedures are applied to minors by reason of their age and the degree of involvement in the crime. This, however, does not affect the definition of “terrorism.”

Now about the history of the issue, the realistic level of its drama and prospects.

The greatest changes in the prefrontal cortex occur between 10 and 25 years of age, when this area is formed and becomes mature. The prefrontal cortex is supposed to have fully matured by the age of 24, but given the total infantilization of humanity, this is no longer a fact.

During this period of time, unnecessary synapses are “pruned” and those that are frequently used are strengthened, which influences the development of cognitive functions and human behavior. Until these synapses are “pruned,” adolescent behavior has little to do with comprehending reality. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was 13 years old and Romeo was 16, and for some reason, their almost suicidal actions have been considered a model worthy of imitation for centuries.

Reflective behavioral management of people with underdeveloped thinking through the stimulation of primitive desires is a piece of cake. It's cheap and effective.

Teenagers want to become adults as soon as possible. They have virtually no rational restrictions on this. Parents were not an authority before, and with the crisis of the family and the expansion of children's rights, the propaganda of their absolute inviolability, they have remained mainly a food source. And not a very satisfying one at that because consumer interests are being rapidly stimulated and resources are shrinking just as quickly.

Moral restraints, with the few exceptions of truly religious families, can be left out of consideration. Soldiers of this age in armed groups in Latin America and Africa were much more brutal than the adult fighters who encouraged them. The teenagers perceived this not as cruelty but as entertainment and acceptance into the “adult club.” I heard these testimonies from competent eyewitnesses. When we read about young people wearing shahid belts, we arrogantly attributed it to the cultural peculiarities of the Muslim world. And it turned out to be true.

Now about cognitive distortions, that is, our social illusions. As a global psychotraumatic event, war (and before that, Covid, the social trauma from which has not dissipated, and before that, the Maidan revolution) does not change people's basic attitudes. It only swings the pendulum of expectations to unbearable limits. And this unexpected amplitude creates the illusion of the irreversibility of change.

There is a thing called a Gaussian uniform distribution curve. It is a simple graph in the form of a high bump or bell-shaped, as it is sometimes called. This curve reminds us that extreme values are not only limited but also symmetrical. In other words, if a million people in the Defense Forces are heroically defending Ukraine and there is a volunteer community that supports them, then there is a correspondingly symmetrical number of those who do not. We hear about heroic deeds in one segment of messages and the opposite stories from the Security Service (SBU), the State Border Guard Service and the National Police.

Each social group can be described using the same graph with its own extremes. This is not a static indicator; it shifts from left to right, like an oscilloscope. As social conditions change, so does the horizontal shift of the curve.

Our perceptions of political and social reality usually only distinguish the phase that boosts our self-esteem and adds optimism. The media tells us about brave and patriotic young people, and we are proud of them. And then there are reports from the SBU about drug addicts of the same age looking for easy money, describing the elements of a horrible crime. We experience cognitive dissonance, the pendulum swings in a nightmarish direction, but not for long. Because we rightly focus on the patriotic segment and leave it to specially trained people to deal with dirt and trouble.

What kind of world surrounds these teenagers? A world of destroyed rules and values, commercial sexualization, devaluation of social and gender roles, increasing freedoms and disappearing responsibility. There is the subjugation of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technology and technology. There is a new religion — a belief in human progress and technological innovation, in the fact that paradise can be achieved through devotion to technology.

Well, hell is also quite possible to achieve, it is much easier and more interesting.

That's what the media focuses on first and foremost. But “don't shoot the piano player, he's playing the best he can.”

The media environment performs the following functions:

• structures what individuals see, say and, consequently, do;
• assigns certain roles to individuals and helps them to adhere to them;
• determines what is allowed and what is forbidden.

The media write about all of the above and people “mirror” it. The function of mirror neurons is that they are activated both when performing a certain action and when other people observe the same action. Mirror neurons also play a role in learning by imitation. The more vivid the example, the more exciting it is. If critical thinking is not present simply because of age, then the corresponding psychological imprinting is formed — a learning process when images or behaviors are fixed in memory during critical periods of development, forming stable behavioral programs.

For example, every year we read about young people who died from electrocution because they wanted to take a daring selfie on the roof of a train. That is, about those who failed. And repetition means that the number of successful attempts for this environment (on social media) is sufficient to repeat potentially suicidal behavior.

Or about the drug addiction of terrorists, a constant component of SBU reports. A huge number of adults around them have not just been on various antidepressants for years. This is a community of interest. Of course, antidepressants are better than psychosis, and adults have the right to do what they want with their bodies and health, and they have the right to their own addictions. But this is socially approved and tolerated behavior. So adults are allowed to use different chemicals to improve their mood, but teenagers are not?

All the social examples around show them that personal success and survival are based on breaking the rules, not following them. This is the time to throw up our hands in despair and ask, “Where is our national and patriotic education?”

It would be appropriate to answer using the famous mortuary aphorism, “Nothing but good is to be said,” but we still need to say something. Fundamentally, it is a part of state propaganda. Propaganda by itself has no effect on anything. It's like a carved frame with fake gilding on a painting. Viewers never look at the frame because they are looking at the picture.

In our case, the “picture” is a set of established behavioral narratives on which there is a consensus in society. The state creates a formal uniform framework against which the national idea, thinking on state building and other similar constructs look bright and convincing.

If they exist. And most importantly, if all the hypothetical authority figures, from the top public officials to parents, behave in accordance with these models. No comment here. And even in the postmodernism of the last century, no one was impressed by an empty framework. “The main problem of Ukraine is moral degradation, and everything else is a consequence,” said Liubomyr Huzar.

There is a strong layer of civil society, there are public organizations, and they support themselves effectively. They too have limits to their growth because there is little demographic prospect for increasing the share of young people in the society. Quantitative growth can only be achieved by reducing the rigidity of these groups. And there is no universal solution here; each group decides for itself.

Now, finally, about the recruitment activities of the Muscovites.

This is a gargantuan industry that has been operating on an industrial scale on all continents for many decades. Many interesting books have been written about it. And, as is the case with all kinds of fiction, no amount of fact-checking affects the process itself. Debunking anything makes sense only to those who already know that they are “on the side of the light.”

Our topic also has its own Gaussian curve. Symmetrically to the disposable terrorists (of different ages and genders, but similar in intellectual development) there is an equivalent number of serious and influential agents, segmented by political and social roles, “depth of penetration,” and levels of publicity. We sometimes read about charges and even arrests (of those with whom it no longer makes sense to play the counterintelligence game) and erupt in justified anger, in the shadow of which disposable terrorists disappear again.

The easy money they are promised is indeed easy at first, as in fraudulent pyramid schemes or online casinos. Put up a poster, make a stencil, write a slogan on the wall, share a post in the media, write a comment based on certain instructions. Do you remember the mass hysteria at the beginning of the invasion about “tags” on the ground marking sites for Russian strikes? Meaningless graffiti on poles, intersections, road signs, as if they were signposts for some stray subversive groups. Do you think Russian paratroopers painted them?

As the intensity of direct fire confrontation decreases, this activity will continue and grow in scale. Military classics show that information operations are most active during the kinetic actions they accompany. And when hostilities decrease or subside, it is time for psychological operations.

Since terrorists, dead or caught, remain anonymous, we learn nothing about them or their parents. Negative publicity and personalized public condemnation is what a teenage terrorist is sensitive to. Parental responsibility? Israel demolished the homes of terrorist families by the hundreds. As soon as it stopped doing so for humanitarian reasons, the terror intensified. Well, of course, we are not Israel.

There are no recipes for miraculous healing here. Ukraine's current political and legal system is a hybrid of vulgar socialism, state corruption and wild libertarianism. It is programmed for self-reproduction and self-preservation.

In the context of global turbulence, such utter stubbornness portends only self-destruction. Dreamy stories where the ugly system somehow evaporates painlessly on its own, and the wise people elect someone “with a new and righteous law” are already too embarrassing to be shown even on Netflix. The saying “the army will come and restore order” is more a nightmare of politicians than a reality, and such series always have a spectacular beginning and an unsuccessful ending of the season.

In this information space, it is similar to the drone and missile attacks by Muscovites. How most people react to the message “take cover”? By explaining to themselves why they will not do so. And all the explanations are quite reasonable. Only the dead, may God forgive me, are not interested in them anymore.

Be like the smarter minority. Turn your home and family, faith and beliefs, education and friends into an information shelter — at least for your children.