Developers Of Putin's Hypersonic Missiles Arrested For Treason
- 17.05.2023, 18:58
The maximum punishment for high treason this year has become life imprisonment in the Russian Federation.
The wave of high 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 Novosibirsk Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), who were involved in the creation of hypersonic aircraft, were arrested in turn by the security forces under an article, the maximum punishment for which this year became life imprisonment.
On Tuesday, May 16, ITAM employees published an open letter in which they announced the arrest on suspicion of treason of Valery Zvegintsev, Doctor of Technical Sciences and chief researcher, who founded the high-velocity air gas dynamics laboratory at the institute.
Since April 7, Zvyagintsev has been under house arrest. His immediate supervisor, director of ITAM Alexander Shiplyuk, was placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in August last year, a few days after the arrest of chief researcher Anatoly Maslov. Both were charged under the same article — Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Treason”. According to Academ.info, Maslov was suspected of transferring data related to hypersonic technologies to China.
Shiplyuk and Maslov have been working on hypersonic missiles for over 10 years. They presented the experimental design of such weapons back in 2012 at a scientific seminar in France, Reuters notes. Four years later, a work jointly authored by two scientists on aerodynamic research at hypersonic speeds was published.
Shiplyuk has also been involved in the protective coating of hypersonic missiles in recent years — his work, cited online, is devoted to this topic, wrote The Telegraph.
In total, in the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is known for its strong potential in the field of physics and mathematics, 16 people were prosecuted, including the former head, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Aseev. One of the scientists, 54-year-old Dmitry Kolker, head of the laboratory of quantum optical technologies at Novosibirsk State University, died in a Moscow pre-trial detention center shortly after being arrested by the FSB.
On March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of hypersonic weapons in Russia during his address to the Federal Assembly. In an animated presentation demonstrating launches across the United States, Putin showed deputies, senators and officials the Zirkon anti-ship missile and the Avangard intercontinental ballistic missile with a glide block. The latter, according to Putin, develops speeds above 20 mach and melts in flight, “like an ice-cream”.
In addition, Putin presented the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, which, according to the president, “is guaranteed to overcome” not only existing, but also promising air defense and missile defense systems.
On May 4, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced that it had shot down the Kinzhal with the help of American Patriot air defense systems developed back in the 1970s, which Kyiv received from Germany and the Netherlands. Later, the information about the interception of the missile was officially confirmed by the Pentagon.
The Kremlin has not commented on the detention of hypersonic scientists on suspicion of treason, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing on Wednesday.
“Russian special services are working, they are performing their functions, this is a very serious accusation,” he said, adding that only a court can find a person guilty.