Truck driver who unintentionally transported Ukrainian drones to Olenya Air Base faces life sentence
The spectacular Operation Spiderweb damaged 41 aircraft at air bases across Russia, including several strategic bombers parked at the far north airfield on the Kola Peninsula.
On January 28, Moscow's Basmanny District Court started to hear the case against the Russian drivers that carried the hidden drones that attacked several military airfields last spring.
The drivers, now charged with terrorism, were allegedly unaware about the Ukrainian drones in their cargo. Some said they received instructions over the phone on where to park the lorries. The one who drove north was told to stop at the Rosneft gas station outside the town of Olenegorsk. From there, the distance to the Olenya Air Base is a short six kilometres.
A total of 150 drones were used in the attack, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who organised the operation that took place in the morning on June 1, 2025.
In addition to the Olenya Air Base on the Kola Peninsula, the air bases Belaya (Irkutsk Region), Dyagilevo (Ryazan Region) and Ivanovo-Severny (Ivanovo Region) were attacked.
The truck drivers all came from Chelyabinsk and were carrying prefabricated houses. Images shared by the SBU show how the drones were stashed secretly in the roofs of the wooden cabins.
Once the trucks were parked near the airfields, the roofs were blown up and the drones lunched and commanded remotely. Small explosives were triggered when the drones hit the wings of the strategic bombers. At the Olenya Air Base, four Tu-95MS bombers and one military cargo plane were totally destroyed after the small explosives carried by the drones put the fuel tanks in the wings on fire.
It was Kommersant newspaper that first reported about the ongoing court case that is being held behind closed doors.
The drivers do not plead guilty.
"Despite the arguments presented by the investigator, [his] guilt has not been proven. In essence, the evidence confirms that [he] was unwittingly the person transporting the drone. His only guilt is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's wrong to convict him for that," the on of the lawyers said to Kommersant.
President Volodymyr Zelensky later confirmed the the Russian truck drivers were unaware of the hidden drones they carried.
If found guilty, the drivers face life sentence, which in Russia is 12 to 20 years in a maximum security prison.
It's noteworthy that bringing terrorist charges against drivers who unknowingly brought explosives have already happened in other high-profile cases. For example, a similar case came up for court after the October 2022 Crimean Bridge bombing. Eight people were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Southern District Military Court. Their defence insisted that the case file contained no evidence of the defendants' knowledge of the explosives hidden in rolls of plastic film or their intention to commit a terrorist attack.
