A prominent Russian physicist has been sentenced to 15 years on treason charges in the latest prison term for a scientist working on the country’s hypersonic missile programme.
The Moscow city court found Alexander Shiplyuk, the 57-year-old director of a top Siberian science institute, guilty of “state treason” on Tuesday after a trial held behind closed doors.
More than a dozen senior Russian scientists have been arrested in recent years, at least three of whom, including Shiplyuk, were working at the prestigious Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, in Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city and a major scientific hub.
Experts have said the trials indicate a modern “spymania” and growing paranoia among Russian political elites regarding its military production.
The Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta reported that Shiplyuk was suspected of having shared classified information at a scientific conference in China in 2017.
Shiplyuk denied the allegations, saying the information he presented was already publicly available in open sources.
The BBC’s Russian service reported that Shiplyuk refused a plea deal.
In May, Russia sentenced Anatoly Maslov, a 78-year-old professor of aerodynamics at the same institute and a colleague of Shiplyuk, to 14 years in prison on treason charges.
Russian media said he was accused of passing classified data related to Russia’s hypersonic missile programme to German intelligence.
Russia has billed itself as a world leader in hypersonic missiles, cutting-edge weapons capable of carrying payloads at up to 10 times the speed of sound to punch through air-defence systems.
While there has been a spike in treason cases focused on those allegedly fighting for or aiding Ukraine, others have burrowed into seemingly loyal state institutions, such as the scientific research centres that helped research the weaponry that Russia is using to strike Ukraine.
The court cases against the scientists are conducted in secret, with few details about the charges being made public.
Russia’s loose definition of espionage makes it easy to bring cases against scientists, including accusations related to their participation in international projects, even those initiated long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The cases also highlight the increasing influence of the security services, which appear to have been encouraged to pursue more prosecutions of this nature.
The lengthy sentences mean the accused experts could spend the rest of their lives behind bars. There have already been instances of scientists dying in pre-trial detention.
In October 2022, Valery Mitko, an 81-year-old Russian scientist arrested on high treason charges, died while under house arrest after several heart attacks. Last year, Dmitry Kolker, 54, the director of the Laboratory of Quantum Optics at Novosibirsk State University who was being held in a spy investigation, died two days after his arrest while being treated in a hospital for stage 4 cancer.