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Over 700 teenage suicides officially registered in Russia in 2016

There is no statistics data about those teenagers who survived suicide attempts, a senior Russian lawmaker said

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. More than 800 children committed suicide in Russia in 2016, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Monday, citing official statistics of the Russian Investigative Committee.

"In 2016, as many as 720 children killed themselves," Irina Yarovaya, a deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, said at a meeting of the working group on prevention of teenager suicides.

She admitted she had no statistics data about those teenagers who survived suicide attempts. "We have data only on those poor children who were actually killed remotely by proxy. When a child is in a state of frustration he or she is easy to be manipulated," she said.

In 2015, the number of teenage self-killers increased considerably in 32 Russian regions compared to 2014, she said, citing the Russian Investigative Committee’s statistics.

In this context, she drew attention to survival quests, such as Do or Die, or Train Surfers. Apart from that, according to Yarovaya, as many as 4,864 suicide-related online links were exposed last year.

"This is a real war on children, real criminal activity, well-conceived, well-organized and well-targeted," she stressed.