In Russia’s Perm region, teenagers looking for part-time work through local Telegram channels are being sent mass offers of “dirty” jobs: for 10,000 to 40,000 rubles, they are asked to damage property or set fire to communications and railway facilities, with the work described as part of an alleged arrangement between owners and insurance companies.
A reporter from the outlet Veter, which first published the material, examined messages from so-called “black employers” posted on the Solikamsk Live classifieds channel. Applicants are told they need to “do insurance jobs,” “damage and burn,” or carry out the “dismantling of electrical equipment through damage or arson.” Some recruiters insist the work is not about drugs and that there is “nothing criminal” in the assignments.
On August 16, 2025, FSB officers detained 16-year-old Daniil Vall in central Solikamsk, his mother Alyona Zaytseva told the publication. The day before, he and a 17-year-old friend had set a mobile phone tower on fire on the outskirts of the city. According to his mother, he was told in private messages to stage an “insurance incident” and was promised 30,000 rubles, with the sender claiming the tower’s owner had an arrangement with insurers.
Before the arson, the teenagers received detailed instructions: buy a five-liter bottle, pour out the water, purchase gasoline, go to the provided coordinates, douse the electrical box at the tower, ignite it, and record the fire on a phone. Both were detained the next day. Daniil was charged under Article 205, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code as a terrorist act committed by a group, which carries a sentence of up to ten years in a juvenile penal colony.
“He is not stupid, but apparently he trusted them. He believed the people who wrote to him so convincingly,” Alyona Zaytseva said.
The administrators of Solikamsk Live publish screenshots of such exchanges in a “blacklist” section. The article says the recruiters use both Russian phone numbers and numbers with country codes from Moldova and Turkey. One of the accounts contacted by the journalists, a user named German, first described his work as legal and later denied any connection to insurance-related arson.
According to the report, this is not an isolated case. In March 2026, 19-year-old Solikamsk resident Kirill Pegushin was sentenced to 12 years in prison on terrorism charges for setting two cell towers on fire in the winter of 2025. In November 2025, the FSB reported detaining two teenagers in Perm after a transformer substation was burned, and in spring 2025 student Rustam Kamakaev was arrested over the destruction of a cell tower in Chernushka.
The mobile operator Tele2 assessed the damage from the tower fire at 660,000 rubles; according to Daniil’s mother, the families of the two teenagers are expected to split that amount equally. Zaytseva is seeking to have the charge reclassified and argues that the case concerns property damage, not terrorism.