The issue of free will and the violence opposing it is of scientific interest for philosophers, psychologists, lawyers. Manipulation is a category related to violence, and it has mainly deserved a scientific explanation either as a method of social management in sociology and philosophy, or as a method of interaction between the state and society in political science. Lawyers have shown less interest in it. The expansion of «information warfare», the establishment of criminal liability for «fakes» under art. 2071, 2072 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation made a legal understanding of these categories particularly relevant. The purpose of this study is an attempt to «implement» achievements in the field of philosophy, psychology, political science into the canvas of modern criminal law to develop a functioning definition of the coercion, manipulation, responsibility, and their relationship with free will as the basic category of all normative legal acts. Therefore, the novelty of the presented research lies in the very formulation of the question. The methodological basis of the research if the system-functional and existential-phenomenological method and the experimental method. Novelty. Criminal law studies have not been conducted before through the lens of the correlation of free will, coercion and manipulation. Results. Freedom of will in criminal law is the possibility of choosing a certain behavior, whether coercion or manipulation opposes it. It is important to understand that there can be no categories of semi-freedom in law, free will is postulated, it acts as a kind of legal fiction, axiom, hypothesis. Therefore, the emphasis shifts to the establishment of responsibility, based on the premise that the subject had sufficient free will, which is opposed either by coercion or manipulation. The latter can only act as a way of committing a crime. Coercion and manipulation in criminal law have the same structural elements, therefore, the analysis of the phenomenon of «manipulation» in criminal law is constructed through a similar category of «coercion», which has a developed conceptual and methodological apparatus. Practical significance. The results of the study offer a new approach to solving a number of practical problems related to the conceptual apparatus of the criminal law. The conclusions of the work can become a theoretical basis for the practical activities of lawyers practicing «risk-oriented approaches» in criminal law.