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Russian Teen’s Sentence Upheld in Minecraft ‘Terrorism’ Case

Nikita Uvarov, 16, is serving a five-year sentence.

Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld a sentence imposed on a teenager who plotted to blow up a digital recreation of an FSB building in the video game Minecraft. Nikita Uvarov, 16, was one of three of the “Kansk teenagers” arrested in Siberia in 2020 and charged with terror offenses. The three 14-year-olds were detained after putting up leaflets about political prisoners on a real-world FSB building in the city of Kansk—two were given probation but Uvarov, who denied his guilt, was sentenced to five years in February 2022. “I am not a danger to society,” Uvarov said in court, independent media outlet SOTA Vision reported on Telegram on Tuesday. “I think five years in prison is too cruel. I repented, corrected myself and no longer plan to come into the view of the authorities and break the law.”