Free but not quite yet. The unwitting Russian truckers caught in Ukraine’s drone “Operation Spiderweb” are released from prison as charges loom

On September 16, the Moscow City Court released the four Chelyabinsk men from pre-trial detention. According to Kommersant daily, the ruling came after the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to approve their indictment, conceding that the evidence of their involvement was insufficient.

The truckers—Mikhail Ryumin (56), Andrey Merkuryev (62), Alexander Zaytsev (57), and Sergey Kanurin (48)—were arrested after June 1, 2025. They had been hired to transport prefabricated houses across Russia, unaware that their trailers concealed Ukrainian drones. The remotely controlled drones launched from their parked trucks to strike strategic military airbases, including “Olenya” in Murmansk and the Ivanovo airfield.

Initially, there was a fifth defendant in the case. Vasily Pytikov, 62, was killed when his truck exploded on a highway in the Amur region during the drone launch. The Investigative Committee quietly closed the criminal case against the deceased driver in February 2026.

Now, the surviving drivers have been freed under a “ban on certain actions”. A defense attorney who requested anonymity told Mediazona that the men are forbidden from communicating with each other or witnesses, and are banned from using the internet and mobile networks, except for emergency calls. Most importantly, the drivers cannot return to their families in the Urals: because the Prosecutor General returned the criminal case to the Investigative Committee, they must remain in Moscow, ready to be summoned by investigators at any moment.

“Nobody will go to Chelyabinsk, I think, because they need to appear before the investigator; investigative actions will still be carried out,” the lawyer explained. “The criminal case has not yet been closed. We hope it will be, but for now, we have only won, you could say, the first battle.”

The lawyer added that months of imprisonment has “negatively affected the health and psychological state” of the drivers, who had been facing decades in prison on terrorism and explosives charges.

“My client was so moved today, he had stopped hoping for anything,” the defender shared. “All of them were overjoyed.”

In the spring of 2025 the truckers accepted what they believed were routine jobs transporting dismantled prefabricated frame houses to four different regions across Russia. Unbeknownst to them, the cargo concealed Ukrainian drones primed for an attack.

On June 1, 2025, those hidden drones emerged from the trucks to unleash coordinated strikes on major Russian military airbases deep within the country. The targets included the “Olenya” base in the Murmansk region, “Belaya” in Irkutsk, “Dyagilevo” near Ryazan, and an airfield in Ivanovo, which houses Russia’s rarest A-50 “flying radar” reconnaissance aircraft.