Russia detains two teens over school attack plot

Russia’s security service on Wednesday said it had detained two teenagers on suspicion of plotting a deadly attack on a school with weapons and homemade explosives.

The pair — both born in 2005 and Russian citizens — had been active on websites where they propagated an ideology of mass murder and suicide, the FSB security service said in a statement.

It said they had been planning an attack on an “educational institution” in the Volga River city of Saratov.

They were arrested in a hideout where they were keeping a sawn-off shotgun and had also planned to use homemade explosives, the instructions for which they had found on the internet, it said.

Investigators have opened a criminal probe against them into belonging to a group planning to cause multiple fatalities.

According to Russian news agencies, since 2018 the FSB has uncovered 150 extremist internet groups of young people and averted 50 armed attacks on schools.

The TASS news agency said that one of the young men had told investigators that the aim of the attack was “revenge” and they had planned to kill some 40 people.

In 2018, a teenage gunman killed 20 students and staff in a rampage at a college in the city of Kerch in Crimea — the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

The arrests of the teenagers comes as the FSB has been heavily criticised by rights activists over a case of two leftists in their 20s accused of belonging to a group that plotted attacks on elections and the 2018 World Cup.

The two leftist activists returned to court in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday, with supporters insisting they are victims of FSB conspiracy and torture.