The Moscow City Court released from custody four truck drivers accused of attacks on airfields

The Moscow City Court released from custody four truck drivers accused of involvement in attacks on Russian military airfields. TASS reports this.

The lawyer of one of the defendants in the case, Oksana Olgerdt, thanked the court for hearing the drivers’ position and softening the preventive measure. The detention was changed to prohibit certain actions for Andrei Merkuryev, Alexander Zaitsev, Mikhail Ryumin and Sergei Kanurin. The case itself has not been dismissed, their lawyers noted.

The drivers do not admit their guilt. After completing the investigation, the Prosecutor General's Office refused to approve the indictment in the case and sent it for further investigation. Nevertheless, the investigator asked the Moscow City Court to extend the arrest period for the truckers, but the court refused.

The case contains 90 volumes. The four defendants are charged with terrorism and illegal trafficking in explosives. According to investigators, truck drivers from among the natives of Ukraine were recruited by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) for Operation Web. At the end of May 2025, trucks with frame houses left Chelyabinsk for different regions of Russia. The cargo contained drones with explosives, which were remotely activated by the SBU on June 1, when the trucks were near military airfields. The drones flew out of the trucks and attacked Russian planes. The damage to the Russian Ministry of Defense was estimated at two billion rubles.

The truckers deny any guilt, insisting that they were “used in the dark.” During the terrorist attack, they tried to stop the drones at the cost of their own lives; one of them, Vasily Pytikov, did not survive. His daughter stated that he did not know about the presence of explosives in the cargo.

The drivers' defense indicates that after the attack they themselves reported to law enforcement agencies. Lawyer Olgerdt pointed out that if the special services could not prevent the terrorist attack, then what could ordinary truck drivers do?