A court docket in Russia on Thursday convicted eight individuals on terrorism prices over an assault on a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that may be a key provide route for Kremlin forces within the war with Ukraine.
The court docket sentenced the entire defendants to life in jail.
The October 2022 attack on the bridge got here when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repairs. The blast killed the truck driver and 4 different individuals in a automobile close by. Moscow decried the assault as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, concentrating on the nation’s energy grid over the winter.
The Ukrainian Safety Service, generally known as the SBU, claimed accountability for the assault.
Eight individuals together with Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian residents had been arrested. 5 others, together with three Ukrainian and two Georgian nationals, had been charged in absentia.
Artyom and Georgy Azatyan, Oleg Antipov, Alexander Bylin, Vladimir Zloba, Dmitry Tyazhelykh, Roman Solomko and Artur Terchanyan had been charged with finishing up a terrorist assault and unlawful arms trafficking. Solomko and Terchanyan additionally had been accused of smuggling explosives.
The Russian authorities accused them of aiding Ukraine in organizing the assault. All of these arrested have denied the fees and insisted they didn’t know the truck carried explosives, in line with Russian media studies.
Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the SBU, stated in a 2023 interview that he and two different “trusted workers members” ready the assault and used different individuals with out their data.
A army court docket in Russia’s southern metropolis Rostov-on-Don about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the border with Ukraine started attempting the accused in February 2025 behind closed doorways. The Russian authorities have accused Maliuk of organizing the assault.
Antipov, an entrepreneur whose logistics firm dealt with the cargo of the cargo within the truck that exploded, went to Russia’s Federal Safety Service, the FSB, as quickly as he heard in regards to the blast and failed to achieve the driving force of the automobile.
He hoped to help the investigation, he and his spouse Irina instructed the Mediazona impartial information website. Safety officers initially let him go, however days later he was arrested.
A video printed by Mediazona confirmed Antipov addressing the courtroom after the decision and insisting, “We’re harmless. We’re harmless.”
“All of us handed — eight of us — all of us handed the polygraphs. All of us proved our innocence. We cooperated totally. We went to legislation enforcement ourselves and gave our testimony. Not a single individual has testified in opposition to us,” Antipov stated from a glass cage within the courtroom, the place he stood alongside different defendants. “All of the witnesses say we’re harmless. All of the proof says we’re harmless. All 116 volumes (of case recordsdata) say we’re harmless. Present the individuals the reality.”
The bridge connecting Crimea and Russia carries heavy significance for Moscow, each logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for army and civilian provides and as an assertion of Kremlin management of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine attacked the bridge twice — in October 2022 with a truck bomb and in July 2023 with sea drones. The second assault killed two individuals.
The 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge over the Kerch Strait that hyperlinks the Black and Azov seas carries street and rail visitors on separate sections and is significant to sustaining Russia’s army operations in southern Ukraine.
The bridge is the longest in Europe and a topic of appreciable pleasure in Russia. Building started in 2016, about two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and was accomplished in little greater than two years.
The bridge was constructed regardless of robust objections from Ukraine and is probably the most seen and fixed reminder of Russia’s declare over Crimea.
