Russian hypersonic weapons creators arrested for treason

The wave of treason cases that swept Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine has reached the largest scientific center of the Russian defense industry.

Three scientists from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Novosibirsk, were arrested one after another by law enforcement officers under an article that now carries a maximum penalty of a life sentence, which came into effect this year. They were involved in the development of hypersonic aircraft.

On Tuesday, May 16, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics employees published an open letter in which they announced the arrest on suspicion of treason of Valery Zvyagintsev, a doctor of technical sciences and chief researcher who founded the high-speed aerodynamics laboratory at the institute.

Zvyagintsev has been under house arrest on 7 April. His supervisor, Alexandr Shiplyuk, the chief of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, was placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in August of last year, a few days after the arrest of Anatoly Maslov, the chief researcher.

Both were charged under the same Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, high treason. Maslov was suspected of transferring data related to hypersonic technologies to China.Shiplyuk and Maslov worked on hypersonic missiles for more than 10 years.

They presented the experimental design of such a weapon back in 2012 at a scientific seminar in France. Four years later, a work jointly authored by two scientists appeared on aerodynamic research at hypersonic speeds.

In total, 16 people were prosecuted in the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, known for its strong potential in physics and mathematics, including Aleksandr Aseev, the former head and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. One of the scientists, 54-year-old Dmitry Kolker, the head of the laboratory of quantum optical technologies at the Novosibirsk State University, died in the Moscow pre-trial detention center shortly after his arrest by FSS officers.