Minecraft: Teens sentenced to prison for plotting to blow up game's FSB building

A Russian teen was reportedly sentenced to five years in prison for plotting to blow up a virtual version of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in an online game, which is Russia’s domestic intelligence agency.

A court in Siberia has sentenced three teens to prison for playing a popular online video game. While this may sound unreasonable to you, but this could happen to you too if you are playing Minecraft in Russia.

According to a report published by The Guardian, Nikita Uvarov, a 16-year-old boy, was found to be guilty of “training for terrorist activities” by a Russian military court. The teen was reportedly sentenced to five years in prison for plotting to blow up a virtual version of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in an online game, which is Russia’s domestic intelligence agency.

Uvarov is not the only boy that has been found guilty. His two friends, Bogdan Andreyev and Denis Mikhailenko, were also found to be a part of this “terrorist” act. The teens already had a record of doing something similar in the past.

The boys were arrested back in June 2020 for hanging up political leaflets on the local FSB office that had slogans of “the FSB is the main terrorist.” The act also showed support for Azat Miftakhov, an anarchist who was sentenced to six years in prison for vandalism in the year 2019. This happened when the boys were just 14.

The teens were recently found to be plotting to blow up a virtual version of the FSB. The cited source claims that it was also discovered that the boys had experimented with improvised explosive devices that were used on abandoned buildings. Thus, the boys were recently found guilty of “undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities,” and were sentenced to prison. The other two boys were delivered suspended prison terms of three years and four years.

For those who are unaware, Minecraft is a popular multiplayer online video game, which allows anyone to build an empire with utmost freedom and equality. The game, which is marketed to children, lets people create new worlds and invite others to play. It offers a ton of materials that can be used to build anything in the game. There is no story or objective in Minecraft and players get the ability to construct and destroy anything in the virtual world.

Currently, it is still unclear whether the government's contention is that the kids played this video game as a way to practice virtual training exercise for actual terroristic acts, or the teens were just pretending to blow up FSB building. The Guardian’s report suggests that this is not the first time that the Russian government has done something and that youngsters have been imprisoned on similar “terrorism” charges in the past.