Over the past six years, the FSB, the successor to the Russian KGB, has charged a dozen physicists with treason. They have been in prison since 2018, when Vladimir Putin began to speak publicly about the production of new hypersonic missiles in Russia. The men are accused of passing classified weapons information abroad. But their colleagues say they worked far outside the realm of military development and were merely theoretical scientists. BBC AFRIQUE investigated the state secrets the FSB is seeking in these international projects and spoke to relatives of the imprisoned scientists.
Hypersonic weapon
"For the first time, we created weapon systems for offensive strikes, the likes of which the world has never seen," Putin boasted in an interview with the Russian news agency TASS in 2020. "Today, the United States is catching up. This is a unique situation that has never happened before. First of all, of course, I'm talking about hypersonic attack weapon systems.
The journalist responded with a joke, paraphrasing Chekhov: "A hypersonic gun hung on the wall in the first act must fire in the second". Two years later, Russia started the war in Ukraine and actively used these hypersonic missiles.
In 2005, Putin first talked about weapons complexes that would "operate at hypersonic speed". In 2018, he revealed them - "without an equivalent in the world" - in his speech before the Federal Assembly. Lawmakers were shown a simulated video of such missiles in flight toward the United States. "They will be virtually invulnerable and their speed will be hypersonic. They will be like a meteorite," he said.
The new strategic missile complex with power and ground-based bases was called "Avangard" and the aviation complex "Dagger" or "Dagger". Putin ended his speech with a threat to the West: "No one heard us. Hear us now!" He also thanked the weapons designers. "All of them are truly the heroes of our time." Since then, Putin has mentioned hypersonic weapons in his speeches at least 70 times.
During the same period, as of 2018, a dozen Russian scientists associated with hypersonic projects ended up behind bars. All are charged with treason. Several people were arrested by the FSB at the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIImash) and the Central Institute of Aerohydrodynamics (TsAGI) in the suburbs of Moscow, as well as at the Institute of Theoretical Mechanics and Applied Sciences (ITPM) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.
Alexander Kuranov, a 76-year-old scientist who worked on a hypersonic aircraft project, was sentenced to seven years in prison during a closed-door trial that took place in just two sessions on April 18, 2024. The FSB arrested this senior scientist in August 2021 "With this approach, other scientific fields will soon be affected," says a colleague of one of the scientists accused of treason. So far they have chosen one of the most "fruitful" avenues to explore. But they really don't get it and confuse "hypersonic" with something completely different.
"Hypersound is something you are now forced to put people in jail for," says Yevgeny Smirnov of the legal and human rights organization First Division, which supports those accused of espionage. Before being forced to leave Russia in 2021, Smirnov himself defended treason cases in court, including against scientists. He claimed that in private conversations FSB officers often admitted that cases related to the sale of hypersonic secrets abroad were opened "to satisfy the wishes of higher-ups". "The documents in the case show that Russia has very advanced technologies in the field of hypersonic weapons, which have no equivalent elsewhere in the world," explains Smirnov. "And foreign intelligence officers are allegedly looking for them. He adds that investigators do not hide the fact that they report to Putin every case of treason involving scientists."
The physicists arrested in Novosibirsk never had anything to do with "Dagger", claims Vladimir Lapigin, a former employee of TsNIImash, who was convicted of treason and released in early 2020. "They were engaged in theoretical research and developments. All the people arrested in connection with hypersonic weapons were way off topic."
Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov also claims that none of the dozen scientists arrested in recent years for revealing the "secrets of Russian hypersonic technology" have anything to do with the defense sector. The scientists arrested in connection with the "Novi Siberian affair" are simply specialists in the aerodynamics of hypersonic flows. "Scientists study physical processes. Let's say we give them a research topic: how some metals can deform at hypersonic speeds, or what turbulence zones would look like. It's not about building a rocket, but about studying physical processes," explains Smirnov. Anyone can then use their results, he says, including military institutions involved in weapons production.
But the defendants in the treason cases were engaged in primary research and basic science, not weapons development. Smirnov explains that the goal of the FSB is to prove that the spies are looking for the secrets of Russian missiles: "To flatter the ego by showing that Russian missiles are the best and that they are trying to steal them." In the spring of 2023, when a third man among them was arrested for treason, scientists from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IMT) decided to write an open letter and sound the alarm on his behalf. It was only thanks to this letter that his name became public: Valery Zvyagintsev was under house arrest, while two other ITPM colleagues working in the field of aerodynamics, Anatoly Maslov and Alexander Shiplyuk, were in pre-trial detention since last summer.
"Their experience and professional reputation would allow them to find prestigious and well-paid jobs abroad. But they did not leave the homeland. They dedicated their lives to Russian science," the authors wrote in their open letter. But the letter does not mention another physicist placed in pretrial detention by a Novosibirsk court on the same day as Zvyagintsev: Vladislav Galkin, an associate professor in the oil and gas department at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, was also arrested for treason. His arrest was first reported in mid-December, although he had been behind bars since April 7. Galkin was not employed by ITPM, but, like the other three scientists who appeared on the FSB radar screen, he worked in the field of hypersonic technology. "Masked armed men came to search the house at 4 in the morning," said a relative of Galkin, who requested anonymity for fear of his safety. "They rummaged through everything they could and said they would have lifted the floorboards if they were looking for drugs. All documents with scientific formulas written on them were confiscated, along with a mountain of files."
The same scenes are happening at the home of another scientist, Vladimir Kudryavtsev, who was arrested for treason in 2018. He died before his case went to court. "They arrived at five or six in the morning," recalls his widow Olga. "It was funny: we have nothing to hide. They took the computer but nothing else. I had letters that we wrote to each other when we were young, and an FSB agent took a lot of time to study them carefully... I went up to him and asked him: "Well, did you find anything interesting? He immediately blushed all over." She remembers the guards asking her "where the gold and diamonds are hidden". They even made their way through a pile of sand left in the garage. One of Vladislav Galkin's relatives says that he first spent three months in solitary confinement in Novosibirsk pre-trial detention. The 68-year-old scientist was then placed in a cell with four other prisoners. Today he is in prison with ten other prisoners. Galkin's wife, Tatiana, claims that the FSB has barred her from commenting on the case while it is ongoing. "I'm not going to take any chances because we say our prayers every day," she said. "I don't know his field of work. I'm not a physicist by training. I am a historian." She says that until his arrest, he continued to write and rewrite articles. He would finish one and then another idea would occur: "What if I had tried it this way? That's how the tech mind works," she says. When he was not working, her husband organized chess competitions with his grandchildren. "I don't know how to play this game, I only make drafts," says Tatiana Galkina. She told her grandchildren that their grandfather was on a business trip. "They ask me: "Where is grandfather, why hasn't he come home? I tell them it's just that kind of journey.
Hypersonic crime progression
Galkin is the author of one hundred scientific articles, including more than a dozen published in foreign journals between 2002 and 2021. Valery Zvyagintsev is a co-author of nine of them. His most recent research focuses on numerical methods in the mechanics of liquids, gases and plasmas. The online archives of the Tomsk Polytechnic University, where Galkin worked until recently, list more than 20 of his papers, including those he wrote with Zvyagintsev and with Alexander Shiplyuk of ITPM.
An ITPM source told the TASS agency that the proceedings against Zvyagintsev may have been motivated by an article published in an Iranian journal in 2021. Galkin was also published by that journal. His work and that of Zvyagintsev have been published in English in the proceedings of the annual International Conference on Aerophysical Research Methods, which has been held in Novosibirsk since 1996. It is due to meet again this year. "Let's see how many foreign participants will come to the conference this time," commented people close to Shipluk when asked about the prospects for international cooperation with ITPM.
The two scientists worked closely together. In 2001, Zvyagintsev founded and directed the Institute's Aero-Fluid Dynamics at High Speeds. Shiplyuk, the future director of the Institute, took over the laboratory in 2006. The entire aerodynamics department was overseen by Maslov, who had been deputy director of the Institute for two decades. "Alexander Nikolaevich (Shipluk) experienced the news of Maslov's arrest very badly. He was his favorite teacher, his scientific supervisor and head of his most cherished laboratory,'' Shipluk's family members said in written responses to questions. Shipluk's son Mikhail is a third-year student who also worked at ITPM and is currently on leave from the university. Maslov's son also worked at the Institute until at least 2020. What unites the three arrested men is not only their workplace, but also their participation in "FP7", the seventh framework program of the European Union - Subsidy Fund for Space Research . This program is managed by the Von Kármán Institute for Fluid Dynamics, based in Belgium.
Besides ITPM, two other scientific organizations mentioned above also participated in the program - TsAGI and TsNIImash. The FSB also visited them and six of their employees ended up behind bars, also charged with treason. All the physicists knew each other. "I knew them all: Zvyagintsev, Shiplyuk, Maslov," says Vladimir Lapigin, a scientist from TsNIImash who was arrested for treason and then released. Kudryavtsev's widow claims that her husband was also friends with Maslov from ITPM. "They took the most honest ones, the ones who had the best reputation in the history of this institute," said an ITPM official, who requested anonymity for security reasons. Shipluk's family was supported by the institute personally and by collecting money for legal fees. "In the beginning, we were afraid that the other workers would not dare to cross the street when they saw us. But this has not happened so far.
His case caused a sincere and deep interest, which has not passed, even a year and a half after his arrest,", the family says. In a letter he wrote in January, Shipluk said he had received "so many letters and postcards from so many different people that they could not be kept in the cell, due to State Penitentiary Service rules." Often, people accused of treason are linked together by the FSB, according to the usual practice of investigators. Journalist Ivan Safrov, arrested for treason and sentenced to 22 years in prison, explained the reason: the FSB agent must build a "criminal progression", which ensures that the accused not only admits his guilt, but also involves other people. This allows investigators to open new cases. Kudryavtsev's widow recalled that investigators offered her husband a plea deal in which he would plead guilty and name someone else to blame. He has refused this deal.
Others have pleaded guilty, such as Kudryavtsev's protégé, Roman Kovalev, who provided the FSB with dependent testimony against his former mentor. Kuranov, sentenced on April 18, 2024 to seven years in a penal colony for treason, also chose to cooperate with the FSB.
According to the newspaper "Kommersant" and a BBC source with knowledge of the documents in the case, Kuranov testified against Alexander Maslov, 77, whose treason case was being heard simultaneously in the same courthouse. A professor of physics, Kuranov was the director of the scientific research company "Saint Petersburg" for hypersonic systems. His case is classified, but in 2021 the Interfax News Agency reported that, according to the investigation, Kuranov "was engaged in hypersonic technologies for many years and passed classified information on these scientific developments to a foreign citizen.
In 2001, while serving as CEO of a hypersonic systems research company based in St. Petersburg, Kuranov spoke openly about tests of the Ajax hypersonic aircraft and his work with American partners. The project was dormant in the mid-1990s, but it was revived when the US Air Force decided to support it. "Merchant" notes that at the time Russian developers were in competition with their American and French counterparts for funding, partly due to the lower budgets available for this type of work in their country.
American representatives attending a conference in St. Petersburg that year said Kuranov had made no secret of his goal of getting millions of dollars in investment from the US military for his project. "Merchant" quoted Kevin Bowcutt, chief hypersonic systems specialist at "Boeing" at the time, who stated that international cooperation is essential for such projects, given the human and financial resources they require. Asked by the BBC to react to the spate of recent arrests, Bowcut chose not to answer our questions. From "Boeing" they said: "At the moment we cannot comment on anything".
Kuranov hopes to be able to develop a functional prototype of his plane within a decade. He expresses his intention to start negotiations with the Chinese, who are interested in using Russian hypersonic research for civilian aircraft. An agreement with China to pool resources was signed in April 2001 by Anatoly Turchak, who heads the holding company "Leninets" and who is the father of the current head of Russia's ruling party, Andrei Turchak. Two decades later, those who, like Kuranov, openly collaborated with the United States, China and other foreign countries, with the encouragement of the authorities, were charged with treason. Among them, only Kuranov spoke publicly about his participation in the application of hypersonic research to armaments. "In the next 10 to 15 years, the main task of hypersonics is the creation of a hypersonic cruise missile," Kuranov told "Izvestia". in 2011. Ten years later, he is still behind bars.
"It seems that it is enough for a person to do his job to become a traitor to the fatherland", exclaims one of Galkin's relatives. "They have a contract with the Polytechnic University, which provides for the performance of scientific work. And foreign publications have always been highly valued. Time passes, the special military operation in Ukraine begins and suddenly" Oh, it turns out you are posted abroad! But they were the ones who wanted Russian science to be international. He did what they asked him to do. If they had banned foreign publications, he would not have published abroad. First we poked them with the broom in the foreign magazines, then we put them in jail for it. "
The authors of the open letter in support of MPI scientists note that the presumption of guilt is based on the presentation of reports by scientists during seminars and international conferences, the publication of scientific articles in renowned foreign journals and their participation in international scientific projects "The Ministry of Education and Science, according to the orders of the president, gives direct instructions to the institutes so that they commit to work to strengthen cooperation with foreigners,", explains Shipluk's family. "For his part, Shipluk consciously fulfilled this task. Risk assessment was not his job."
His family claims that GPTI's international representation was part of Shipluk's primary job description. In their open letter, the MPI authors claim that the institute's expert panel has repeatedly confirmed that the work of the arrested physicists does not contain classified information and that it has found none. Defense lawyer Evgeny Smirnov confirms that the same applies to works published abroad by those arrested for treason in TsAGI and TsNIIMash. In both cases, this did not prevent the FSB from launching criminal proceedings based on the scientists' international projects. In the case of TsAGI, the secret service agents arrived because they were associated with the HEXAFLY-INT project aimed at developing hypersonic civilian aircraft. The work was coordinated by Belgian scientist Johan Steilant of the European Space Agency. The FSB decided he was a spy. Johan Steilant did not respond to our email questions and did not respond on LinkedIn.
However, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent us this comment about the HEXAFLY project. "HEXAFLY was a research project for high-speed civil air transport up to Mach 8, established in 2012 and sponsored at the time by the European Commission and a European consortium led by ESA and composed of various French, German, Italian and British companies Between the consortium and the Russian organizations TsAGI, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Institute of Flight Research and the Central Institute of Aviation Engines, a separate cooperation agreement was concluded. All contributions and technical exchanges are agreed and provided for in the cooperation agreement between the European consortium and the Russian entities. Dr. Johan Steilant leads and coordinates ESA's involvement and the European consortium's efforts. ESA is aware of subsequent developments. We also know that the name of Dr. Johan Steilant is involved in this proceeding. Johan Steilant is a valued member of ESA and while he was the HEXAFLY coordinator he carried out his task in accordance with the terms of a mutually agreed cooperation agreement and in the best interest of all members of this international cooperation at the time."
"My personal feeling is completely negative", says one of Vladislav Galkin's colleagues, who wished to remain anonymous. "For years, the ministry has forced us to publish in foreign journals and work with foreign scientists, and this obligation has not yet been lifted. Meanwhile, the FSB considers contacting foreign scientists and writing articles for foreign journals to be treason. There is a conflict within the system itself." He told us that the Ministry of Education and Culture is doing nothing to resolve it: "In the Ministry's lists, 60% of the publications are still intended for foreign journals. He adds that MPI has stopped all contacts and collaborations with foreign institutes and journals and has suspended its hypersonic research.
"It is difficult to work in such conditions. The fault is not so much the restrictions as the lack of detailed guidelines and clear laws. "We are waiting for our hour to come, but we believe that common sense will prevail," the scientist said. After the publication of the ITPM open letter, the Kremlin issued a comment. "We took into account their call, but the special services are working and fulfilling their duties. The accusations are serious," said the president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. According to people close to Shipluk, however, this is only a short wave in the press. There have been no other reactions since then.
This letter is a rare example of public support for scientists arrested for treason. The FSB managed to scare Russian physicists as well as their foreign colleagues. Lawyers tried in vain to persuade the latter to testify in the defense of the treason cases and help their Russian partners prove that they were communicating with scientists, not spies. According to Smirnov, "they were completely terrified after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal (a double agent whom Russian agents tried to kill in Salisbury, UK, in March 2018)" Russian colleagues of the defendants also generally refuse to testify for the defense in court and avoid commenting on the prosecution. "Everyone is afraid and hides in their corner," says Kudryavtsev's widow. Scientists are still afraid today. "I have made a commitment to a certain organization, so I cannot comment," said an ITPM official, who said he feared prosecution by the FSB. Another employee said he would get back to us in a month. Three others did not respond to calls and messages. "I will be sent back to prison after talking to you," said Vladimir Lapigin, the former scientist from TsNIImash.
"Almost all cases of treason of scientists recently revealed followed the same scenario," explains Smirnov. "FSB agents visited the institutes and searched international projects implemented over the last 10-15 years for what would work best for them. The goal was not to find the guilty, but to imprison a few people from each institute," Smirnov also says. The FSB then asked the experts to check whether the projects and presentations they were interested in contained state secrets. The root of the problem lies in the conclusions drawn by the experts who reveal the "secrets", says Smirnov. These experts are often military engineers from one of dozens of institutes of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. "If a civilian and a military scientist examine the same work, the military scientist will naturally see some state secret or something everywhere he looks, even though the physics of military and civilian engineering are exactly the same," explains Smirnov. The expert commission will classify even the information contained in school textbooks as a state secret, says Smirnov.
"Imagine you need a multiplication table to write a presentation and build a Petrel rocket. You will use the same technology." This is how a scientist who presents his work abroad or participates in an international project is accused of treason. Lapigin admits that the logic of the investigations is exactly the same as described above, and recalls his own interrogation: "We had test models in wind tunnels that resembled either missile warheads or fairings. The shape of the objects themselves is not a secret. However, the investigator told me: "Well, these are missile warheads! I took a pencil and said: "Here's a pencil - it's not a secret, it's not hidden, it's not a weapon. But if you poke it in the eye, it becomes a weapon. But I'm not stabbing you with it. Therefore, the pencil cannot be considered a classified technology. The fact that the rocket fairing has an elliptical shape does not make the ellipse a secret formula.
FSB investigators also found the shape of the rocket in the research sent by Kudryavtsev to the Von Karmann Institute in Belgium. As his widow recalls, the institute was responsible for studying the behavior in turbulent flows of a tapered cone model. Since the experiment did not work, the physicists rounded the cone to obtain the desired turbulent flow. The study was successful, but the FSB discovered secret information: the cone with a rounded top already resembled a rocket. Experienced military engineers agreed that the behavior of such a model in turbulent flows would be useful to them - and that it was therefore a state secret. "Keep quiet, don't post articles and don't meet strangers," says Lapigin. "Write articles secretly and you will get your salary and good grade. According to him, this is the only way for a scientist to avoid being accused of treason."But this is bad for our country because it means that there will be no progress. This does not bother everyone. They think that it is possible to live like this and it is not so bad.
Speaking for the FSB today, Lapigin recalled that in Soviet times, a KGB agent was responsible for the protection of state secrets at TsNIImash. "He copied formulas from a textbook into a closed notebook, making them confidential. However, this did not help him." Lapigin is convinced that what the FSB today calls treason, a Soviet-era scientist would have gotten away with a censure or, at worst, lost his job. "There is no way they can be charged with treason."
Hundreds of Russian scientists have left the country since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. But even before the invasion, the brain drain was staggering: an official survey in 2018 showed that 800,000 Russians with higher education had gone abroad. In total, Russian law enforcement authorities arrested 12 scientists on charges of treason. All of them were in one way or another related to the study of physics at hypersonic speeds. Three of them are now deceased.
Ironically, scientist Dmitry Kolker was among those selected to participate in a televised question-and-answer session with President Putin in 2001. He died shortly after his arrest, 20 years later. In addition to Kudryavtsev, his colleague from TsNIIMash Roman Kovalev was there - his wife died while he was in custody, and he himself died a month after he was released from prison. Dmitry Kolker, director of the Quantum Optics Laboratory at the Institute of Laser Physics, was hospitalized with stage four pancreatic cancer. Two days later he died. More than 20 years ago, Putin was already president, and Kolker worked at the Institute of Laser Physics. They spoke on state television during Putin's first annual telephone marathon.
"What will happen to basic science and will funding for basic research increase," Kolker asked. Putin assured him that science is more important than oil and gas "and of course the state must pay due attention to science." The state effectively brought attention to the scientists by doing so through the FSB.
Two scientists from TsAGI, Anatoly Gubanov and Valery Golubkin, were sentenced to 12 years in a "strict regime" penal colony. Gubanov is appealing the sentence and his lawyer Olga Dinze hopes it will be reduced. On April 17, the Supreme Court of Russia overturned the decision in the Golubkin case and ordered a retrial. Golubkin personally participated in the hearing after being transferred from a colony in Petrozavodsk to Moscow. Currently detained in Lefortovo prison, Golubkin will benefit from better conditions there than in the colony, according to Maria Eismont, a lawyer specializing in the protection of human rights. "We hope that the doctors will examine him, run tests for tumor markers and that he will be closer to his loved ones who will be able to visit him regularly," Eismont said. Golubkin was operated on for colon cancer several years ago. Sergei Meshcheryakov of TsNIIMash received a seven-year suspended sentence in 2021. "He had cancer. He wanted to reject the suspended sentence and fight," Lapigin recalls.
Valery Zvegintsev from ITPM remains under house arrest in Novosibirsk.
Its director Alexander Shiplyuk is in FSB custody in Lefortovo, Moscow. "He never complained about the conditions of detention and over the last 18 months we got used to the situation," his family explained. "He is in a cell for two people, well ventilated and without heating problems. We regularly bring him food parcels or send him things to keep him healthy and to restore his strength. "It is not always easy to make it from Novosibirsk, but we are grateful to the family and the people in Moscow who take care of him." In the past year, Shipluk has been allowed to see his wife only three times and his children only once. He was allowed to make ten phone calls to his relatives. His son Mikhail says that his father lived only for his work. "He basically devoted his life to it. Shipluk loved snowboarding, but even then he combined this activity with participation in winter physics conferences. Mikhail says that the books his father reads in prison no longer have anything to do with science. He became more interested in philosophy and learned by heart Pushkin's poem "Eugene Onegin". "The father gives a sense of security. Without him, it disappears and you have to fend for yourself, without a father's shoulder to lean on,'' he says. "I miss his support and advice. We write letters to each other, but not about everything, but only about the essential things." Shipluk's lawyer, who does not dare to give his name, said the scientist maintains his innocence. The preliminary investigation is nearing its end. "That is all I can say on procedural matters, as it does not concern the material of the case. I have taken a non-disclosure agreement because, according to the investigators, the materials in the case contain classified information."
77-year-old Anatoly Maslov, Shiplyuk's colleague at MPI, was also detained in Lefortovo, but the investigation has now ended and the case has been being heard for the past seven months by a court in St. Petersburg. He pleaded not guilty. Shipluk's son Mikhail also knows Maslov and maintains a relationship with him. "He is not as emotionally stable and positive in his letters as my father," he says. Maslov is also defended by Olga Dinze. She specifies that his trial is being conducted separately from other MIPT cases. "His scientific field has always been turbulence, and it has nothing to do with hypersonics," she explains. "But he was involved in it and some died while others have to answer for their actions." The defense must prove that Maslov does not have specialized knowledge in a specific scientific field - Dinze could not specify which, since the documents in the case are classified "He does not admit his guilt, he has nothing to admit based on the fantasies of the prosecution," says Dinze. "When he found out what was going on, he was horrified and apathetic about participating in the hearing," she explains. "We try to encourage him and tell him that we should at least make the process uncomfortable for our opponents."
Vladislav Galkin can see his relatives only through a glass partition in the detention center where he is in Novosibirsk. "He holds the phone on one side and we hold the receiver on the other," says his wife Tatiana. "The other day I thought I could write a letter. I don't know who, maybe the prosecutor. But obviously not to Putin," she said. "I can ask them to put me in the same pre-trial detention. It would be very easy - you just have to suspect someone of something." She is quite serious. It's been almost exactly a year since her husband was arrested. "The FSB is in action. To make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs. This is the way things are going in the country at the moment," she added.