Worked too well together. Crimean bridge bombing defendants sentenced to life in prison

The explosion on the Crimean bridge occurred at around 6am on October 8, 2022. Five people were killed: the driver of the truck carrying the hidden explosives, and four people in a car that was next to the truck. Following a massive fire, a section of the bridge collapsed into the water.

A few days later, the FSB reported the detention of eight people suspected of the terror attack. They included Oleg Antipov, the head of a St Petersburg logistics company who had called the FSB himself after learning of the explosion; Artur Terchanyan, an Armenian truck driver living in Georgia; Roman Solomko, a farmer from Kherson, Ukraine; and five other businessmen: brothers Artem and Georgy Azatyan from Armavir, Kherson native Vladimir Zlob, Dmitry Tyazhelykh from Lipetsk, and Crimean resident Alexander Bylin.

According to the investigation, employees of Ukraine’s special services were behind the truck explosion on the bridge, a fact the SBU, Security Service of Ukraine, later confirmed. The explosive device was hidden in rolls of polyethylene film, which were transported from Odesa via Bulgaria, Armenia, and Georgia using falsified documents.

In early 2025, the trial for the Crimean bridge truck bombing began behind closed doors at the Southern District Military Court. In late October, the state prosecution requested life sentences for all defendants. According to a Mediazona source, the trial was closed to ensure the safety of some participants. “They brought a certificate from the FSB stating that information had allegedly been received about threats to the investigator, the state prosecution, and the witnesses,” the source said.

The state prosecution’s closing arguments were presented by a duo: Denis Yunoshev, known for his role in the case of Ukrainian prisoner of war Nadiya Savchenko, and his colleague Alexey Ivanov.

The prosecutors insisted that the defendants acted with too much coordination for the defence’s version, that they were used unwittingly, to be credible. But an examination of the closing arguments makes it clear that the investigation only has circumstantial evidence of the defendants’ guilt. None of them denied being involved in transporting the cargo, but not one admitted to the terrorism charges. The defendants maintain they simply did not know that the SBU was secretly using them in its operation against Russia.

But Russian security forces, and subsequently the prosecution, saw the situation differently. “All the defendants were in it together and understood perfectly well what they were doing and why,” prosecutor Denis Yunoshev stressed.

“A trial run for a terrorist attack.” Prosecutors claim the scheme to deliver explosives via the Crimean bridge was tested beforehand with different cargo

One of the prosecution’s arguments is that several months before the Crimean bridge attack, some of the defendants had already tested the cargo delivery route to Russia using the same scheme that was later used to import the explosives.

Back in 2021, Roman Solomko, the farmer from Kherson, ordered a pellet mill line from China. Due to the war, the equipment got stuck in a Turkish port. To solve the problem, the farmer imported it via Armenia, a member of the Eurasian Customs Union (EAEU). EAEU labelling simplifies the Russian customs process.

The film concealing the explosives was later also marked as a product of the customs union. This EAEU cargo status also helped hide the fact that it was actually sent from Ukraine. The entrepreneurs involved in this scheme would later become defendants in the Crimean bridge terror attack case.

“Having tested the logistics route by delivering the pellet mill line to Solomko, the members of the organised group were convinced that there would be no thorough inspection of the vehicle with the IED. The cargo had received EAEU status, the trailer was sealed, and therefore there were no grounds for a thorough inspection!” Denis Yunoshev argued.

The prosecutor dismissed the possibility that Solomko used this scheme simply to get his purchased equipment faster. “The prosecution is convinced that this was a trial run in the meticulous preparation for the terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge,” Yunoshev stressed.

According to him, the cargo of film had no real recipient, as the goal was to deliver it to the Crimean bridge and detonate it there.

Farmer Solomko was asked to help transport the cargo by his neighbour, Denis Kovach, who was allegedly acting on instructions from the SBU. Kovach, two other Ukrainians, and two Georgians have been placed on an international wanted list for their involvement in the terror attack.

According to the prosecution, the scheme to legitimise cargo through the EAEU zone was developed by Levan Benashvili, a Georgian citizen who ran a logistics company. Thanks to him, the truck with the explosives passed through Russian customs without suspicion. After the explosion, Solomko himself travelled to Simferopol and, until his arrest, lived in a hotel near the FSB headquarters in Crimea.

Marilyn Monroe on the Crimean bridge. Prosecution tried to convince the court of defendants’ pro-Ukrainian views

Oleg Antipov, a St Petersburg resident, is another defendant who went to the FSB himself to explain his connection to the truck that exploded on the Crimean bridge. Antipov was the CEO of TEK-34, the company that ordered the truck’s journey from Armavir to Simferopol. He also hired the driver who died in the blast.

According to the investigation, Antipov’s guilt lies in the fact that he was obligated to personally receive and inspect the cargo, but failed to do so. While the St Petersburg man’s actions could be explained as sloppy work by a logistics middleman rather than participation in organising a terror attack, prosecutor Yunoshev insisted that someone with Antipov’s experience as a freight forwarder could not have made such a mistake by accident.

To strengthen its position, the state prosecution attributed pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian views to some of the defendants.

On Antipov’s phone, the prosecutor claimed, they found “materials reflecting a negative attitude towards the Russian Federation and its special military operation.”

“In particular, Antipov’s phone contained photographs <...>, as well as videos published by news channels, which depicted the burning Crimean bridge and videos approving of the bridge’s explosion as a ‘birthday gift’ for the President of the Russian Federation, including an audio recording with the following content: ‘Death to the Russian occupiers. May Russia croak’,” Yunoshev said.

Antipov’s wife told Mediazona that he “was no enemy of the Motherland” but did read public channels “related to the [‘special military operation’]” and journalists labelled as “foreign agents.” According to her, what was found on her husband’s phone were not photos or screenshots, but “a few links in the cache,” because Antipov had been reading news about the explosion and was worried about the driver who had died.

Prosecutor Yunoshev also mentioned voice messages sent to another defendant, the truck driver Artur Terchanyan. The messages came from Sandro Inasaridze, who allegedly suggested the driver write “a rude, offensive, profane expression” about Vladimir Putin on the customs documents, along with the words “Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava” (Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Heroes). The FSB considers Inasaridze another link in the organization of the terror attack.

On the phone of another defendant, Dmitry Tyazhelykh, a “satirical video” was allegedly discovered, in which the creators mocked the consequences of the explosion.

The image in this clip was split in half: one side showed Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President”, while the other showed the destruction of the Crimean bridge.

According to an anonymous Mediazona source, Tyazhelykh denied the existence of this video during the closing arguments. The judge even inspected his phone but found nothing of the sort.

A burner SIM from Lipetsk. One defendant had no connection to freight transport at all

Unlike the other defendants, who were all involved in some way in delivering the rolls of film to the Crimean bridge, Dmitry Tyazhelykh had no connection to freight transport whatsoever.

Since 2018, the Lipetsk resident had been a partner with the OnlineSim service, a company renting out virtual subscriber numbers. This is why he was arrested.

Russian authorities announced plans to block such services back in September 2023, but OnlineSim only stopped issuing Russian numbers in August 2025, after a law banning the transfer of SIM cards to third parties came into force.

And although Dmitry Tyazhelykh had no control over which numbers were issued (the service assigns them randomly), this did not stop the FSB from naming him as another defendant in the Crimean bridge terror attack case.

Tyazhelykh was accused of providing the Russian phone number used by the cargo’s recipient, likely an SBU agent, operating under the pseudonym “Ivan Ivanovich,” to register on Telegram. This number was subsequently used by Ukraine to coordinate the operation to blow up the bridge.

Tyazhelykh insisted that any other OnlineSim partner whose number was randomly selected by the algorithm could have been in his place. In this light, the charge against Tyazhelykh looks like an attempt to hold a completely random person accountable. Moreover, the Lipetsk resident did not even know any of the other defendants.

“There is not a single word in the criminal case materials suggesting that anyone knew me or that I knew anyone, or that anyone gave me instructions,” he said in court.

This did not convince the investigation or the prosecution. “Tyazhelykh was aware that he was providing the ability to covertly and anonymously coordinate the criminal actions of the accomplices to the terrorist act, without revealing the subscriber’s location or the mobile operator’s ownership of the number,” prosecutor Yunoshev insisted.

All the defendants, he claimed, committed “mutually complementary actions” that led to the terror attack, and Dmitry Tyazhelykh was one of them.

“Instead of fighting terror, [the defendants] embarked on its path under the guidance of Ukraine’s special services, especially during such a difficult time for our country: the time of the special military operation,” Yunoshev added.

With Alla Konstantinova

Editor: Dmitry Treshchanin