On Sept. 16, the Moscow City Court released four truck drivers whose vehicles were used last year by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in attacks on Russian military airfields as part of Operation Spiderweb, according to a report by the Kremlin-aligned newspaper Kommersant. The court ordered the release of Andrei Merkuryev, Alexander Zaitsev, Mikhail Ryumin, and Sergei Kanurin after Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office refused to approve an indictment prepared by the Investigative Committee. Prosecutors said the evidence collected against the men was insufficient.
At the Sept. 16 hearing, the judges rejected a request from the Investigative Committee to extend the drivers’ detention until Oct. 12. The investigators alleged that the truckers transported explosives as part of an organized group and that they had effectively “committed a terrorist attack.” They were charged under provisions covering illegal trafficking of explosives by an organized group and terrorism resulting in major damage.
The Investigative Committee alleged that the men were part of a group including Ukrainian-born Artyom and Ekaterina Timofeyev and a wanted man identified as “Borisovsky,” who investigators say were recruited by the SBU. Some of the drivers were formally employed by a sole proprietorship registered to Timofeyev, while others dealt with him simply as a customer who ordered routine freight transport.
The case materials indicate that the defendants left Chelyabinsk driving trailers trucks carrying prefabricated frame houses. However, unbeknownst to the drivers, Ukrainian drones that had been concealed in the roof of each structure.
On June 1, 2025, when the trucks were positioned near military airfields in the Ivanovo, Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ryazan and Amur regions — where drivers had been instructed to make their deliveries — SBU personnel remotely activated the drones, which then attacked the Russian military facilities. The investigation estimated the damage to Russia’s Defense Ministry at 2 billion rubles ($23.7 million). The investigation lasted more than a year and ultimately filled more than 90 volumes before being sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Insider previously reported on the claimed damage.
Kommersant reported that last week First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin refused to approve the indictment, saying that investigators had failed to find direct evidence of the drivers’ guilt and that the circumstantial evidence was not enough to send the case to trial. He returned the case to the Investigative Committee for further investigation. The Investigative Committee disagreed and appealed Razinkin’s decision to Prosecutor General Alexander Gutsan.
While the dispute between the agencies remains unresolved, the Moscow City Court ruled that there were no longer any legal grounds to keep the defendants in pretrial detention, and the four drivers were released Sept. 16. The men deny any wrongdoing and describe themselves as “Russian patriots,” adding that after the drones emerged from their trucks, they themselves called the police, tried to shoot down the drones, and attempted to minimize the damage caused to the airfields.
