A court in Russia on Thursday convicted eight people on terrorism charges over an attack on a bridge linking Russia with Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine.
The Court sentenced all the accused to life in prison.
The October 2022 attack on the bridge occurred when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repairs. The explosion killed the truck driver and four other people in a nearby car. Moscow labeled the attack an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombing Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, and targeting the country’s power grid during the winter.
The Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Eight people including Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian citizens were arrested. Five others, including three Ukrainian citizens and two Georgians, were charged in absentia.
Artyom and Georgy Azatyan, Oleg Antipov, Alexander Bylin, Vladimir Zloba, Dmitry Tyazhelykh, Roman Solomko and Artur Terchanyan were charged with committing a terrorist attack and illegal arms trafficking. Solomko and Terchanyan were also accused of smuggling explosives.
The Russian authorities accused them of helping Ukraine in organizing the attack. All those arrested denied the charges and insisted they did not know the truck was carrying explosives, according to Russian media reports.
The Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the SBU, said in an interview in 2023 that he and two other “trusted staff members” planned the attack and used other people without their knowledge.
A military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the border with Ukraine began trying the accused in February 2025 behind closed doors. Russian authorities accused Maliuk of organizing the attack.
Antipov, an entrepreneur whose logistics company handled the shipment of the goods in the truck that exploded, went to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, upon hearing of the explosion and failed to reach the driver of the car.
He hoped to assist in the investigation, he and his wife Irina told the independent news site Mediazona. Security officials initially let him go, but days later he was arrested.
A video published by Mediazona showed Antipov addressing the courtroom after the verdict and insisting, “We are innocent. We are innocent.”
“We all passed – eight of us – we all passed the polygraphs. We all proved our innocence. We cooperated fully. We went to law enforcement ourselves and gave our testimony. Not a single person testified against us,” said Antipov from a glass cage in the courtroom, where he was next to other defendants. “All the witnesses say we are innocent. All the evidence says we are innocent. All 116 volumes (of the case files) say we are innocent. Show the people the truth.”
The bridge connecting Crimea and Russia has great significance for Moscow, both logistically and psychologically, as a major artery for military and civilian supplies and as an assertion of the Kremlin’s control 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 naval drones. The second attack killed two people.
The 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge over the Kerch Strait linking the Black and Azov seas carries road and rail traffic in separate sections and is vital to supporting Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.
The bridge is the longest in Europe and a subject of considerable pride in Russia. Construction began in 2016, about two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and was completed in just over two years.
The bridge was built despite strong objections from Ukraine and is the most visible and constant reminder of Russia’s claim to Crimea.