Russia's FSB says Ukraine's military intelligence chief took part in Crimean Bridge attack

The Federal Security Bureau (FSB) of Russia said that the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge was organised by the head of military intelligence of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, TASS reports.

According to the FSB, Budanov was supervising the actions of agents and their accomplices. Eight people were detained for complicity in preparing the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge. They are five citizens of Russia, three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia. In total, at least 12 accomplices in organizing the crime have been identified so far.

The organizers of the terrorist act camouflaged the explosive device in construction polyethylene film rolls packed on 22 pallets with a total weight of 22,770 kilograms. The cargo was shipped in early August from the seaport of Odessa to Ruse, Bulgaria, under Contract No. 02/08/2022 concluded between Baltex Capital S. A. (Ruse) and LLC Translogistic UA (Kyiv).

From Bulgaria, the cargo was transported to the Georgian port of Poti, and from there — to Armenia. From September 29 to October 3, the cargo was cleared at the Transalliance terminal in Yerevan through customs according to EurAsEC rules. Cargo documents were replaced, and the sender was listed as GU AR GROUP LLC (Republic of Armenia, Alaverdi), while the recipient was Lider LLC (Moscow).

After that, on October 4, the DAF truck registered in Georgia crossed the Russian-Georgian border at the Upper Lars checkpoint. The FSB does not disclose how exactly the cargo got from Armenia to Georgia. On October 6, the cargo ended up at the wholesale base of Armavir (Russia's Krasnodar region). On October 7, with the participation of Ukrainian citizens Roman Solomko and Vladimir Zloba, as well as five Russians, the documents for the cargo were changed again.

Now the cargo sender was designated as TEK-34 LLC (Ulyanovsk), while the recipient was listed as a non-existent company in the Crimea. The same day, the pallets were loaded into the truck of the Russian national named as Makhir Yusubov, who left for Simferopol. The explosion occurred on October 8, at 06:03 a. m. Moscow time, as the truck was driving along the Crimean Bridge.

The FSB showed a video of the inspection of the truck that exploded on the Crimean Bridge at a customs point. The footage shows a traffic police officer inspecting the truck. The officer did not see anything suspicious inside, and the truck left the checkpoint.

The explosion on the Crimean bridge occurred in the early morning of October 8. The exploded truck caused several road sections of the bridge to collapse. The car traffic on the bridge was relaunched the same day. Railway transport was relaunched a few hours later. As a result of the terrorist attack, four people were killed, several more were missing.