8 people detained for blowing up Crimean bridge: who are they and what about investigation

Russian law enforcement officers have detained 8 people accusing them of blowing up the Crimean Bridge. However, attorneys of those detainees are insisting that the Russian authorities want to frame innocent people and stating that all the detainees just happened to be in the wrong place and at the wrong time. In addition, all the attorneys are saying that their clients have nothing to do with transferring explosives.

Source: Russian BBC News branch, quoting the attorneys and relatives of the detained 

Details: According to the FSB, the explosive could have been hidden in the load with construction polyethylene wrap with a combined weight of almost 23 tonnes. The load allegedly left Odesa and crossed four countries with all proper inspections: Bulgaria, the Georgian port Poti, Armenia, then Georgia again and the Kazbegi – Verhniy Lars customs checkpoint to the city of Armavir (Krasnodar Krai, Russia). 

The wrap was then unloaded at one of the storage points and put into a new lorry, which then blew up on the Crimean Bridge.

More than 30 examinations have been assigned for this particular case, but there are no results yet. Nevertheless, all those who had at least something to do with the load have been arrested for terrorism.

The attorneys of the 8 detained people say that the arrests were executed despite the fact that most of the defendants either came to the police themselves or were let go without any accusations after the interrogation right after the explosion.

Among those arrested:

• Artur Terchanian, a 37-year-old citizen of Armenia and a truck driver, who lives in the Georgian city of Akhalkalaki with his wife and two children. He was driving a lorry from the Georgian port Poti to the Russian city of Armavir. The Georgian company that Terchanian has worked with all the time took this order from one Viber group chat for cargo transportation. According to Terchanian’s attorney, there are plenty of such group chats in Georgia, this is normal practice. The driver was doing his regular jobs – driving the lorry from point A to point B as per the order. The attorney says that Terchanian was just unlucky and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

Artur slept in the same vehicle all 11 days of the road. On 6 October, he arrived at the storage point in Armavir where the wrap was unloaded.

After this, Terchanian spent a day in Pyatigorsk first while a new order was being loaded into the lorry, just so he wouldn’t have to drive back with an empty vehicle. He went to the queue at the Verhniy Lars checkpoint where he was ready to spend another five or six days. He parked the lorry on the side of the road and went to visit his relative in North Ossetia, where Russian secret services called him on 9 October. The driver went to meet them voluntarily right away.

After the interrogation, Terchanian was brought to Simferopol (Crimea), but he was not detained, they just told him "not to go far away from here". On 13 October, it was revealed that he is one of the 8 people arrested for blowing up the bridge. 

Terchanian is accused of bringing a masked explosive to Russia "acting according to a plan developed and agreed on with other members of an organised group". 

• Oleksandr Bylin, a Crimean businessman, who has sold fruits and vegetables in bulk and given a logistics company contact that he worked with as per his market partner’s request [Volodymyr Zlob, who was also arrested for the same cause, more information on him will be revealed below – ed.]. Bylin has three children, one of them disabled, and a wife who has been diagnosed with cancer.  

Oleg Antipov

Photo by BBC

Bylin has regularly ordered transport for his loads from Oleg Antipov's logistics company from Saint Petersburg. On the day of 8 October 2022, after the Crimean Bridge blew up, Antipov called him and said that it was the vehicle that he arranged documents for a day before that blew up on the bridge.  

Antipov said that he decided to go to the FSB office in Saint Petersburg voluntarily and told them everything he knew. Bylin supported him in doing so and also declared that he would be ready to testify. Soon he too was summoned for questioning. 

After thorough interrogation, both businessmen were released by the Russian intelligence officers, who thanked them "for their awareness and cooperation." And a few days later, they were arrested on charges of terrorism.

Bylin is accused of allegedly "acting in accordance with a premeditated plan, jointly and in agreement with other members of the organised group", by instructing to find a truck to transport an explosive device.

• Roman Solomko, a farmer from the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, who owns the company GreenLine APK and has been engaged in farming for 25 years. Previously, Solomko ordered agricultural equipment from other countries. Due to the full-scale invasion of Russia, he had to look for new ways to deliver this cargo to his enterprise. Eventually, the shipment was successfully delivered. And then other people became interested in his ways of arranging such delivery. According to his lawyer, Solomko allegedly has only "shared his experience, explained the entire algorithm of actions", and he himself had nothing to do with the cargo with polyethylene film, nor with its transportation.

The farmer was summoned to Simferopol by the investigative authorities by phone, he arrived, stayed in a hotel for three days, and participated voluntarily in investigative action. Then Solomko was arrested.

He is accused of developing the route and method of delivery of the explosive device, coordinating its movement, as well as the task of finding a storage point for unloading and a new truck.

• Georgii Azatian, director of the Agro-business warehouse in Armavir, and his younger brother Artem Azatian, at whose warehouse in September 2022 the cargo that travelled a difficult route through several countries was transshipped to then safely reach Kherson.

According to the father of the arrested, they were called to Simferopol at night, straight to the Crimean Investigation Department. Georgii took everyone who was present during the transshipment with him, and together they went to Simferopol, settled in a hotel and came in for questioning.

The Azatian brothers were accused of the fact that on 6-7 October, one of them allegedly asked his brother to provide space in the warehouse to transship the explosive device, and the other did so. 

• Volodymyr Zlob, resident of Kherson and compatriot of Solomko, who before and after the Russian occupation was engaged in the supply of grain, vegetables and fruits and who, according to the Russian investigation, was looking for a storage point for unloading pallets with film in Armavir and for a new truck. Investigators believe that he was the mediator between Solomko and the Azatians.

The publication was unable to contact Zlob's lawyer, and his wife refused to comment. But Zlob's mother previously told the Russian propaganda publication RIA Novosti about his pro-Russian sentiments, about the fact that he "took his family to Russia, to Crimea" in March 2022, and insisted on his innocence.

Bylin's wife had said that at the beginning of October, Zlob called her husband asking if it was possible to find a driver with a truck. The businessman was familiar with the market in Simferopol; Bilyn, according to his wife, repeatedly bought wholesale potatoes and later rapeseed from Zlob.

After hearing Zlob's question about the truck, Bylin called Oleg Antipov, head of the TEK-34 logistics company, with whom he regularly cooperated, and asked if there were any cars available. He said that there are cars of different price categories, and Bylin gave Antipov’s phone number to Zlob.

Antipov's wife also said that Bylin simply connected the two entrepreneurs.

The RT channel, financed by the Russian authorities, suggested that Bylin's Extra LLC "could have been" the final recipient of the cargo. However, Kommersant and Interfax wrote, with reference to the FSB, that the recipient was a non-existent Crimean firm.

•  Oleg Antipov, head of a logistics firm from Saint Petersburg, who has worked in the field of logistics for more than 10 years and who remotely accepted an order to send cargo from Armavir to Simferopol by placing an application on Ati.su, a private freight exchange.

Oleg Antipov

Photo by BBC

According to Antipov, he learned about the explosion on the Crimean bridge from the news and did not pay attention at first, because "it was said that the train was the cause". Antipov said that he called drivers in the morning as usual, and the phone of the driver, who was transporting the load with construction polyethylene wrap, was unavailable. Then he called the cargo receiver – he was also unavailable.

The customer, whom Antipov called, expressed concern and said that he would go to the unloading warehouse to look for the driver. However, half a day later, during the second conversation, he told Antipov that he was at the unloading warehouse and that the load with construction polyethylene wrap, for which Antipov had previously issued documents, had probably exploded on the bridge.

Thereafter, according to Antipov, he called the FSB in Saint Petersburg on his own initiative and went there to provide all the information.

Reportedly, Antipov had a son in 2021, and the family took out a mortgage a few days before the explosion.

• Dmitrii Tiazhelykh, an entrepreneur from Lipetsk who, according to the BBC, rented out virtual SIM cards. Tiazhelykh had nothing to do with the cargo, but he was accused of giving "the organisers of the terrorist act an opportunity to negotiate".

According to the Russian BBC News service, the words "unspecified" and "unidentified" appears in the orders to involve people as defendants more than 20 times: "at an unspecified time and place", "unidentified persons", "unspecified explosive device" and "unspecified means of putting it into operation", "unidentified accomplices" etc.

Despite this amount of unspecificity, at the same time the resolutions state that the 8 arrested men "joined the criminal group knowingly, of their own free will, knew about the purpose of its creation", and "the group was characterised by stability and cohesion, thorough planning… of a single criminal plan".

The lawyers of the arrested state that there is no justification for these statements.

In addition, the fact that an unidentified explosive device could pass unnoticed through four countries raises doubts not only among lawyers, but also among the authorities of these countries.

Bulgaria, Armenia, and Georgia unequivocally stated that the cargo fully passed all necessary checks and did not arouse any suspicions.

In particular, Georgia recalled that the cargo had crossed Georgian customs checkpoints, which had been equipped "with ultra-sensitive and high-tech equipment with the help of the USA and the EU" for several years, four times.

The State Revenue Committee of Armenia also assured that there could not be explosives in the truck. The committee specified that all X-ray images and recordings from surveillance cameras were preserved.

It is also reported that a car exploded along with the truck on the bridge, but this is apparently not considered the main version.

The lawyers and those arrested are convinced that the security forces detained random people.

Background:

On the morning of 8 October 2022, it became known that a huge fire broke out on the railway line of the Crimean bridge. The occupation authorities of Crimea stated that a lorry had allegedly exploded on the Crimean bridge. Meanwhile, the so-called head of the "Crimean Parliament" said that "Ukrainian vandals" had damaged the roadway on the Crimean bridge.

Later, Russian media posted a video of the explosion on the Crimean bridge.

In October 2022, the Russian FSB reported on the investigation of the explosion on the Crimean Bridge; according to their data, a total of eight people were detained (however, they gave slightly different names), and the organiser, according to the Russians, was Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence and its head Kyrylo Budanov.

Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, was almost immediately announced by the FSB and the Investigative Committee of Russia as the organiser of the explosion on the Crimean Bridge.

In December 2022, Vasyl Maliuk, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, hinted that Ukrainian special services might be behind the explosion of the bridge.

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