Prosecution of Russian hypersonic scientists

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Prosecution of Russian hypersonic scientists

Date	May 2015 (2015-05) - present
Location	Russia (Moscow, Novosibirsk, Saint Petersburg, Tomsk)
Type	Treason prosecutions
Cause	Alleged disclosure of classified information related to hypersonic flight research at international conferences and in foreign scientific publications
Target	Scientists and researchers working on hypersonic aerodynamics and related fields
Outcome	11 scientists arrested; 8 convicted (sentences of 7 to 15 years); 3 died during investigation or detention
Inquiries	Federal Security Service (FSB)
Charges	Treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of Russia)
Trial	Closed sessions at various Russian courts

The prosecution of Russian hypersonic scientists, referred to in Russian media and by human rights organisations as the hypersonics case (Russian: гиперзвуковое дело), is a series of treason prosecutions brought by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) against scientists working in the field of hypersonic flight and related areas of aerodynamics. Between 2015 and 2026, at least 11 researchers from leading Russian scientific institutions were arrested on charges of disclosing state secrets, typically for presenting research at international conferences or publishing in foreign scientific journals. The cases resulted in sentences ranging from 7 to 15 years in strict-regime penal colonies. Three of the accused died during the course of the investigations or while in detention, including one scientist who was arrested while terminally ill with cancer and died within three days of his arrest. His son posted publicly: "The FSB killed my father."

The prosecutions have been widely condemned by Russia's scientific community and by international observers as politically motivated. Colleagues of the accused scientists stated in a rare open letter in 2023 that the men were innocent, that their publications had been vetted in advance by institutional expert commissions, and that the cases were causing "impending collapse" of Russian aerodynamics research. Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov, founder of the Pervy Otdel ("First Department") project which specialises in defending those accused of treason and espionage, argued that the FSB deliberately targeted elderly scientists because they were "easier to pressure", and that the campaign began after Vladimir Putin publicly stated that Russia's hypersonic weapons were the world's most advanced and needed to be protected from foreign intelligence services.

Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, who represented several defendants, told the BBC Russian Service that the FSB informed him each case was reported directly to Putin, and that the purpose of the prosecutions was "to show that intelligence services around the world are trying to steal the secrets of Russian weapons". The case has been described by T-invariant, a Russian scientific media outlet, as "the largest criminal prosecution of researchers in modern Russia".

Background

Hypersonic weapons and Russian policy

Hypersonic flight refers to speeds exceeding Mach 5, or approximately 6,115 kilometres per hour (3,800 mph). Russia has invested heavily in developing hypersonic weapons, including the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. Putin first mentioned the development of "complexes that will work at hypersonic speeds" in 2005. In March 2018, he delivered a widely reported address to the Federal Assembly in which he boasted of "super weapons" that he said had "no analogues in the world" and could not be intercepted by any existing missile defence system.

The scientists prosecuted in these cases were not directly involved in weapons development but rather conducted fundamental theoretical research into the physical processes associated with flight at extreme speeds. Two United States scientists who knew some of the accused personally told Reuters that their Russian colleagues had been engaged in one element of the work needed to build a hypersonic missile, a process that also involves the integration of sensors, navigational systems, and propulsion, and that no one scientist possessed the full picture.

Institutions involved

The prosecutions targeted researchers at several of Russia's most prominent aerospace research establishments. The Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), located in Korolyov near Moscow, is a scientific subsidiary of the Russian space agency and a key centre for rocket and spacecraft research; three of the earliest cases originated there. The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), based in Zhukovsky near Moscow, is Russia's premier aeronautics research centre, founded in 1918; two scientists from its aerodynamics division were arrested. The Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM, also rendered as ITPM) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located in the Akademgorodok science campus near Novosibirsk, is registered as part of Russia's military-industrial complex and houses a unique complex of hypersonic wind tunnels and gasdynamic facilities; four of its researchers were arrested, making it the most heavily targeted institution.

International research collaborations

A key link between several of the cases was the scientists' participation in collaborative research programmes between Russia and the European Union. The TransHyBerian project, coordinated by the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium, was funded under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-SPACE) with an overall budget of 651,373 euros, of which the EU contributed 499,999 euros. Running from 2011 to 2013, the project examined the behaviour of laminar-to-turbulent transition in hypersonic flows over surfaces, a phenomenon critical to understanding heat fluctuations on spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Three Russian institutions participated, including TsNIIMash.

A second project, HEXAFLY-INT, was an international collaboration involving the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Russia to develop the world's first civil hypersonic aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel. Both projects had been approved at the governmental level, and Russian scientists' contributions had been vetted by internal expert commissions before being shared with foreign partners.

Legal framework

Treason charges in Russia are governed by Article 275 of the Criminal Code of Russia, which at the time the first case was filed carried a sentence of 12 to 20 years. In April 2023, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the law was amended to increase the maximum sentence to life imprisonment. All treason trials are held in closed session due to the classified nature of the materials, meaning the specific evidence against each scientist has never been made public. Lawyers who represent the defendants are required to sign non-disclosure agreements, further limiting public scrutiny. Before 2014, Russia typically saw two or three treason sentences per year; by 2023, this number had risen to 39 verdicts, according to Pavlov.

Cases

Vladimir Lapygin (TsNIIMash, 2015)

The first case in the series involved Vladimir Lapygin, deputy head of the Centre for Heat Exchange and Aerogasdynamics at TsNIIMash and a lecturer at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. He was arrested by the FSB on 13 May 2015 at the age of 75, making him the oldest person ever charged with treason in Russia at that time. According to the prosecution, Lapygin had in 2009 transmitted to a representative of a Chinese institute a demonstration version of software that could calculate optimal aerodynamic characteristics of hypersonic aircraft, information deemed to constitute a state secret. In exchange, Lapygin was alleged to have received 90,000 US dollars. Lapygin denied the charges. He acknowledged sending the file but stated that it was a publicly available demonstration version, that a similar programme had been previously registered with Rospatent, and that he had intended to negotiate a legitimate contract on behalf of TsNIIMash with the Chinese institution, which fell within his professional duties.

At the trial, prominent scientists testified for the defence that similar software was widely available and had been published in open sources. The author of the programme himself, a fellow TsNIIMash researcher, testified that none of the materials used to create it were classified. Memorial subsequently recognised Lapygin as a political prisoner. In February 2017, 23 scientists, including State Prize laureates and members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, appealed to President Putin in a collective letter to pardon Lapygin. Among the signatories was Viktor Kudryavtsev, who would himself be arrested the following year.

On 6 September 2016, the Moscow City Court convicted Lapygin of treason and sentenced him to seven years in a strict-regime colony, a sentence significantly below the statutory minimum of 12 years. He was sent to a penal colony in the Tver Oblast. His two petitions for a presidential pardon were both rejected. In August 2020, at the age of 79, he was released on parole, though the prosecutor's office initially appealed the parole decision before it was upheld. While still in detention, Lapygin wrote a 32-page text entitled "How I Became a Chinese Spy", the details of which were published by human rights journalist Zoya Svetova. The text began: "I, Vladimir Ivanovich Lapygin, born in 1940, worked at FSUE TsNIIMash for 46 years and participated in the creation of all launch vehicles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and re-entry spacecraft developed in the USSR and Russia after 1970." While serving his sentence, Lapygin was visited in prison by FSB investigator Alexander Chaban, who would later become the lead investigator in the high-profile treason prosecution of journalist Ivan Safronov, suggesting a continuity of FSB personnel across related cases.

Viktor Kudryavtsev (TsNIIMash, 2018)

On 20 July 2018, the FSB arrested Viktor Kudryavtsev, a 74-year-old physicist at TsNIIMash, on suspicion of transmitting classified information on hypersonic technology to the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium. Kudryavtsev had been the coordinator from his institute for the TransHyBerian project, which examined the behaviour of hypersonic flows over surfaces. According to the FSB, the information he transmitted could have been used for the development of new weapons, including the Avangard and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal systems. He was placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre, where at the time he was the oldest detainee.

Kudryavtsev denied the charges. His defence lawyers stated that the physicist had not had access to classified information for more than 20 years, and that the FP7-SPACE programme had been approved at the government level with its results published openly in the journal Kosmonavtika i raketostroenie (Space Technology and Rocket Construction). Pavlov, who initially represented Kudryavtsev through his Team 29 legal group, told The Daily Beast that Kudryavtsev was "in jail for sending two emails concerning the TransHyBerian project". The FSB investigator reportedly did not deny that two expert commissions (a departmental commission and the Commission on Export Control of the Russian Federation) had both cleared Kudryavtsev's reports as containing no classified material, but argued instead that Kudryavtsev's personal authority within the institute had caused commission members to approve them uncritically. Memorial called this reasoning "farfetched and unrealistic", noting that most commission members held positions senior to Kudryavtsev's.

The Von Karman Institute issued a formal statement following an internal investigation, declaring that after a thorough inquiry it "could not find any trace of disclosing secret information by the team of Dr. Kudryavtsev in the context of the project TRANSHYBERIAN". The journal Science linked the prosecution to the emerging hypersonic weapons race between China, Russia, and the United States.

Following a broad public campaign in his defence, Kudryavtsev's detention was changed from custody to a written undertaking not to leave his area, and the investigation was suspended for medical reasons. He died of lung cancer on 21 April 2021 at the age of 77, before the case could come to trial. Investigators had reportedly pressured him to confess and provide testimony against his colleagues, including his protege Roman Kovalyov, but Kudryavtsev refused.

Roman Kovalyov (TsNIIMash, 2019)

Roman Kovalyov, 56 at the time of his arrest, was the head of the Centre for Heat Exchange and Aerogasdynamics (TsTA) at TsNIIMash and also served as deputy head of the Department of Spacecraft at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He had worked with Kudryavtsev on the TransHyBerian project and had also coordinated another FP7-SPACE project called SACOMAR, which studied the aerothermodynamics of Mars re-entry and was led by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne. He was arrested in June 2019 and charged under the same case as Kudryavtsev. According to T-invariant, investigators had pressured Kudryavtsev to provide testimony against Kovalyov, his former protege, but Kudryavtsev refused. Kovalyov, unlike Kudryavtsev, pleaded guilty. In June 2020, the Moscow City Court convicted him of treason and sentenced him to seven years in a strict-regime colony. On 13 April 2022, Kovalyov was released from prison on medical grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died two weeks later.

Sergei Meshcheryakov (TsNIIMash, 2019)

In July 2019, a third TsNIIMash scientist, 77-year-old Sergei Meshcheryakov, was placed under house arrest on suspicion of treason. Meshcheryakov was a senior researcher at the Centre for Heat Exchange and Aerogasdynamics who had participated in a separate EU-funded project on planetary defence from asteroids (the NEOShield-2 project), also under FP7-SPACE, in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center. His son reported that Meshcheryakov had suffered a heart attack following his arrest. According to Science magazine, his case was processed separately from Kudryavtsev's but originated in the same FSB investigation. The outcome of Meshcheryakov's case has not been publicly reported.

Anatoly Gubanov (TsAGI, 2020)

Anatoly Gubanov, 63 at the time of his arrest, was the head of Department No. 11 within the Scientific Research Division 2 (NIO-2, the aerodynamics of aircraft and rockets division) at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) in Zhukovsky, and a lecturer at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He came from a prominent Russian aviation dynasty: his father-in-law was Professor Leonid Shkadov, a leading Soviet aviation designer. Gubanov had worked at TsAGI for more than 40 years, was the author of over 105 scientific publications and several patents, and was known as a specialist in supersonic solid rocket engines. Three of his children, Maria, Irina, and Gleb, all physicists, also worked at TsAGI. He was arrested on 3 December 2020 and placed in Lefortovo by order of the court.

Gubanov had been working on the HEXAFLY-INT project (High-Speed Experimental Fly Vehicles - International), launched in 2014 and coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA-ESTEC) in Noordwijk, Netherlands, to develop a concept for a civil hypersonic aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel capable of cruising at Mach 7-8. The project involved specialists from the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Russia. According to the prosecution, Gubanov had transmitted to one of the European partner states secret data related to the hypersonic aircraft under development. His colleagues at TsAGI wrote two letters in his defence: one addressed to President Putin and sent to the Presidential Administration (published in the newspaper Zhukovskiye Vesti), and a second addressed to the Moscow City Court. The letters described Gubanov as a man "respected by his students" and noted his long service and family commitment to Russian aviation.

On 27 October 2023, the Moscow City Court convicted Gubanov of treason and sentenced him to 12 years in a strict-regime colony. Deutsche Welle reported that Gubanov fully admitted his guilt at trial and asked the court to apply mitigating circumstances and impose a sentence below the statutory minimum, though the court did not grant this request. Searches at the home of his colleague Valery Golubkin had been conducted on the same day as Gubanov's arrest.

Valery Golubkin (TsAGI / MIPT, 2021)

Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and a leading researcher at TsAGI, was arrested on 12 April 2021 on charges of treason. He was Gubanov's subordinate at the institute and had been drawn into the HEXAFLY-INT project at Gubanov's direction. According to the prosecution, in November 2018 Golubkin had transmitted to Johan Steelant of ESA-ESTEC, the coordinator of the HEXAFLY-INT project, two reports on work completed by TsAGI. Investigators alleged that these reports contained state secrets. His lawyers from Pervy Otdel stated that the documents had been checked by three expert commissions, all of which concluded they contained no classified information and cleared them for transmission to the foreign partners. The lawyers further noted that Golubkin had only a third-level security clearance, meaning he had never worked with materials bearing the classification levels "top secret" (sovershenno sekretno) or "of special importance" (osoboy vazhnosti). Golubkin himself also noted that he had merely been following orders from his supervisor Gubanov in transmitting the reports, and that the project itself had been approved by the Trade Ministry.

In a letter from pre-trial detention, Golubkin wrote that his arrest had followed testimony from his supervisor Gubanov, who had struck a deal with investigators. In July 2023, the Moscow City Court convicted him and sentenced him to 12 years in a strict-regime colony. The First Appellate Court initially upheld the verdict. However, on 17 April 2024, the Supreme Court of Russia annulled the appellate decision and sent the case for re-examination, with Golubkin's lawyer Maria Eismont stating that until the new decision, "Valery Nikolaevich is not considered convicted". The European Court of Human Rights separately ruled that the duration of Golubkin's pre-trial detention had exceeded reasonable limits and awarded compensation of 1,600 euros.

On re-examination, the First Appellate Court again upheld the 12-year sentence in June 2024. On 14 January 2025, the Supreme Court of Russia definitively upheld the verdict, exhausting Golubkin's legal remedies.

Alexander Kuranov (Hypersonic Systems, Saint Petersburg, 2021)

Alexander Kuranov, 73, was the general director and chief designer of the Scientific Research Enterprise of Hypersonic Systems (NIPGS, Russian: НИПГС), a company based in Saint Petersburg that formed part of the Leninets holding company. Kuranov had overseen work on a new version of a Soviet-era hypersonic aircraft concept dubbed "Ayaks" (Ajax), and was the author of more than 120 scientific publications and patents. For many years, he had organised a Russian-American international symposium on "Thermochemical and Plasma Processes in Aerodynamics" held in Saint Petersburg. In the course of this work, he had collaborated extensively with scientists from the United States and China.

He was arrested in August 2021 and initially placed in Lefortovo, before being transferred to Saint Petersburg. On 18 April 2024, the Saint Petersburg City Court convicted Kuranov in a process that lasted only two court sessions, which the court's press service spokesperson described as unusually brief for a case at that level. He received a sentence of seven years in a strict-regime colony and a fine of 100,000 rubles, significantly below the statutory minimum of 12 years for treason, with the court applying Article 64 of the Criminal Code (assignment of a more lenient punishment). Pervy Otdel stated that the brevity of the trial and the below-minimum sentence indicated that Kuranov had concluded a pre-trial cooperation agreement (dosudebnoye soglasheniye). According to T-invariant and Kommersant, Kuranov testified against at least two of his colleagues, Anatoly Maslov and Alexander Shiplyuk, as part of this deal. His company, NIPGS, was subsequently liquidated.

Anatoly Maslov (ITAM, Novosibirsk, 2022)

The arrest of Anatoly Maslov in late June 2022 marked the beginning of what has been called the "Novosibirsk branch" of the hypersonics case. Maslov, aged 75 at the time of his arrest, was a chief scientific researcher at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM) in Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok, where he had served for more than twenty years as deputy director for scientific work. He was a widely recognised specialist in the aerogasdynamics of high-speed flows; according to the institute's website, he had developed algorithms and conducted the first numerical calculations in Russia of the stability of compressible flows and demonstrated the possibility of full stabilisation of a supersonic boundary layer through surface cooling of an aircraft.

According to the Russian business newspaper RBC, Maslov was accused of transmitting data related to hypersonic research containing state secrets to the intelligence services of Germany in 2014. Two people familiar with the case told Reuters that the prosecution was based in significant part on testimony from Kuranov. Until May 2023, Maslov was held in the Lefortovo detention centre in Moscow; he was then transferred to custody in Saint Petersburg, where his trial took place. In February 2024, his lawyer Olga Dinze reported that Maslov had suffered a heart attack while in pre-trial detention. Dinze described a lengthy prison sentence as tantamount to a "death sentence" given his age and health.

In his final address to the court, Maslov said he had "dedicated his whole life to science and never dreamt of betraying his country" and that he "had done nothing unlawful". The court proceedings were held entirely behind closed doors due to the "top secret" classification of the case materials. On 21 May 2024, the Saint Petersburg City Court sentenced Maslov to 14 years in a strict-regime colony, with one year of subsequent restricted freedom and a two-year ban on activities involving access to state secrets. The prosecution had requested 17 years. Maslov showed no visible reaction during sentencing, only nodding silently. In September 2024, the Second Appellate Court in Saint Petersburg rejected his appeal, with Dinze describing his health as "stably poor" and his morale as severely depressed.

Dmitry Kolker (Institute of Laser Physics, Novosibirsk, 2022)

The case of Dmitry Kolker drew particular public attention and international condemnation. Kolker, a 54-year-old doctor of physical and mathematical sciences and head of the Laboratory of Quantum Optical Technologies at Novosibirsk State University, was arrested on 30 June 2022 on suspicion of treason. His relatives told the press that he was taken directly from a private oncology clinic in Novosibirsk, where he had been admitted the previous day for palliative treatment. He had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. His family said he could not eat independently, "experienced acute pain", "did not always perceive his surroundings adequately", and was taking powerful psychotropic medications prescribed for pain and stress relief.

The Sovetsky District Court of Novosibirsk ordered Kolker detained until 29 August 2022. Despite his terminal diagnosis, he was transported by air to Moscow and placed in the Lefortovo detention centre. On 2 July 2022, he was transferred from detention to Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 29, where he died at 2:40 a.m. on 3 July, three days after his arrest. His son Maxim Kolker posted a photograph of the telegram notifying the family of his death and wrote: "The FSB killed my father. Knowing what condition he was in, they pulled him out of the hospital. Thank you, country! They did not even allow our family to say goodbye. Fiends. Investigator Morozov, the Novosibirsk judge, and the entire state machine, I hope you will answer for your actions. It took you two days to kill a man, and now I and my family are without a father." The Investigative Committee of Russia found no criminal culpability in Kolker's death. In a separate development, the Novosibirsk Regional Court subsequently upheld the legality of Kolker's arrest even after his death, declining to annul the detention order.

According to his university, Kolker was a specialist in laser physics and quantum electronics, and his laboratory worked on "the development of new radiation sources for medical, environmental and special applications". His son told the investigative outlet Meduza that the treason charge was based on lectures on laser physics that Kolker had delivered to Chinese students in 2018. Before travelling to China, Kolker's presentation had been checked for classified content by experts at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who issued a formal certificate confirming the absence of state secrets. Furthermore, Kolker had delivered his lectures in Russian specifically so that the FSB officer who accompanied him on the trip could monitor their content in real time. A group of academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the "July 1 Club", published a scan of the examination results confirming the absence of classified information. Academician Yuri Kostitsyn of the Russian Academy of Sciences wrote publicly that Kolker's "treason" consisted of "reading several lectures to Chinese students", and that "some murderer in shoulder straps really wanted to add another star to them". Kolker's cousin, Anton Dianov, speaking from the United States, told Reuters that the accusation against the laser specialist was "preposterous". The connection between Kolker's laser physics research and the broader hypersonics case was not immediately apparent. However, T-invariant noted that his affiliation with a company called Special Technologies LLC, whose main activity was the development of mid-infrared laser sources for guidance and countermeasure systems, and publications showing that laser frequency research was of interest to colleagues at ITAM, suggested a possible overlap with hypersonic weapons research.

Alexander Shiplyuk (ITAM Director, Novosibirsk, 2022)

On 5 August 2022, Alexander Shiplyuk, the 55-year-old director of ITAM and head of the institute's "Hypersonic Technologies" laboratory, was arrested following searches at the institute and transferred to Lefortovo prison. Shiplyuk was a Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a widely recognised specialist in high-speed aerogasdynamics and experimental methods for investigating gas flows. Two people familiar with the case told Reuters that Shiplyuk was suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017. Shiplyuk maintained his innocence and insisted the information in question was not classified and was freely available online.

The BBC Russian Service reported that Shiplyuk refused a plea deal. According to T-invariant, investigators were unable to "break" Shiplyuk, who refused to cooperate or testify against colleagues. The prosecution requested the maximum possible sentence of 20 years. On 3 September 2024, the Moscow City Court convicted him on two counts of treason and sentenced him to 15 years in a strict-regime colony, a fine of 500,000 rubles, and 18 months of subsequent restricted freedom. Only the operative part of the verdict was read aloud due to the "top secret" classification. In September 2025, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the verdict as lawful, exhausting his appeals.

Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin (ITAM / Tomsk Polytechnic, 2023)

Valery Zvegintsev, the third ITAM researcher to be arrested, was detained in April 2023 at the age of 79. In 2001, he had founded and headed the laboratory of "Aerogasdynamics of High Speeds" at ITAM, the same laboratory later led by Shiplyuk. According to Kommersant, the criminal case against Zvegintsev was reportedly linked to a publication of an article on gas dynamics in an Iranian scientific journal. The article had passed two expert reviews for possible classified content before publication. Unlike his colleagues, Zvegintsev was placed under house arrest rather than in a detention facility, which observers attributed to his advanced age.

Vladislav Galkin, a 68-year-old associate professor at Tomsk Polytechnic University, was arrested in April 2023, though his detention only became public in December of that year when T-invariant first identified the unnamed detainee mentioned in court records. Galkin was a co-author of papers with both Zvegintsev and Shiplyuk and had worked on research in the mechanics of supersonic flows and the design of air intakes for supersonic aircraft. When the Novosibirsk court initially announced the arrest of a second suspect, it did not name him, a step towards secrecy that Pavlov described as "something new" in the prosecution of scientists. Galkin's wife reportedly told the BBC Russian Service that she had informed their grandchildren he was "on a business trip".

On 5 May 2026, the Novosibirsk Regional Court convicted both scientists of two counts of treason each and sentenced each to 12.5 years in a strict-regime colony. Both pleaded not guilty. A colleague of Zvegintsev described his condition at sentencing: "Three years under arrest, Valery Ivanovich wasn't even allowed to go for walks all this time. He has deteriorated so much that he could not even stand to hear the verdict. He can only walk with a cane." Zvegintsev's lawyer, Tatiana Orlova, described the sentences as amounting to death sentences given the men's ages and health conditions. Zvegintsev was 82 at the time of sentencing and would remain in prison until the age of 93 if he served the full term. On 20 May 2026, TASS reported that the defence had filed an appeal against the verdict.

Open letter and scientific community response

In May 2023, following the arrest of Zvegintsev, staff at ITAM published a rare open letter on the institute's official website in defence of the three arrested colleagues (Maslov, Shiplyuk, and Zvegintsev). The letter noted that all three had been arrested for their scientific activities and that their publications had been "repeatedly checked by the expert commission for the presence of restricted-access information, and no such information was found in them". The letter stated that presenting at international conferences and publishing in high-ranking journals constituted "an obligatory component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity" throughout the world, including in Russia.

The letter continued: "In this situation, we are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We simply do not understand how to continue doing our work. On the one hand, the main indicator of the quality of our work within the framework of the state assignment and projects of Russian state funds and departments is the degree of presentation of our results to the scientific community, including scientific publications and conference presentations. On the other hand, we see that any article or report can become the cause of accusations of state treason. What we are rewarded for today and held up as an example to others becomes the cause of criminal prosecution tomorrow."

The scientists warned of "impending collapse" of Russian aerodynamics research and said the cases were deterring young researchers from entering the field. "Otherwise it will be impossible to prevent the catastrophe looming over domestic aerodynamics, and to prevent the damage being done to Russian science as a whole!" the letter stated. The letter was subsequently removed from the institute's website under pressure. A colleague of the arrested scientists told Radio Svoboda that they had been "strongly urged" to take it down with the warning: "You don't want the number of arrested to grow." Copies of the letter were preserved on the T-invariant Telegram channel.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in May 2023 that people should "not draw conclusions about any tendencies" from the arrests, stating: "Our relevant special services perform their function; they safeguard state secrets and monitor the situation for possible cases related to suspicion of treason."

International scientific organisations also responded. The Committee of Concerned Scientists, a US-based human rights non-profit, worked to draw attention to the cases and suggested the Kudryavtsev prosecution might represent a violation of the Magnitsky Act. Boris Altshuler, the prominent Russian physicist and human rights activist, told Science magazine that "strong reaction in the West is an effective practical instrument to raise the level of decision-making on the case".

Analysis

Deliberate targeting of elderly scientists

Pavlov, who represented defendants in treason cases through Team 29 and later Pervy Otdel, stated that the FSB deliberately selected elderly scientists as targets because they were easier to pressure. "The 'hypersonics case' began when Putin casually said at one event that Russia's hypersonics are the most hypersonic in the world and that intelligence services from every country are hunting for information about them," Pavlov told T-invariant. Of the 11 scientists arrested, eight were elderly at the time of detention, ranging in age from 63 to 79. The pattern extended to the mechanics of the investigations: investigators would pressure older scientists to confess and provide testimony against colleagues, with the implicit promise of reduced sentences. Only Kuranov agreed to cooperate, leading to a below-minimum sentence; the others refused and received sentences of 12 to 15 years.

Retroactive classification and "secret lists of secrets"

A recurring feature of the cases was the prosecution of scientists for sharing materials that had been explicitly cleared for publication at the time of sharing. Pavlov told The Daily Beast that "Russian state institutions, including the Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry, have lists of secrets, which are also secret, so scientists often have no idea what they are not supposed to speak about". He added: "Kudryavtsev could not know back in 2013, when the government approved his research with foreign partners, that the Von Karman Institute would become a number one enemy." In multiple cases, materials that had been reviewed and cleared by two or three separate expert commissions were later retrospectively deemed to contain state secrets by FSB investigators.

Political motivations

Smirnov of Pervy Otdel stated: "It is obvious that the persecution of scientists is an exclusively political step by the Russian authorities, by which they seek to show that intelligence services around the world are trying to steal the secrets of Russian weapons." France 24 reported that experts saw the arrests as reflecting the FSB's effort to maintain its relevance by stoking the regime's paranoia. Jennifer Mathers, a professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University, told France 24 that Putin "doesn't trust anyone" and that the FSB "knows how to present itself as indispensable to the Kremlin", citing a 2012 incident in which FSB director Alexander Bortnikov claimed that Siberian forest fires were the work of al-Qaeda without evidence, using the claim to request a budget increase.

Smirnov further told the BBC Russian Service that every treason case involving a scientist was reported directly to Putin, and that FSB investigators told him the purpose was "to show that Russian missiles are the best". A military analyst from the Israeli television station Channel 9 noted the irony that Russia's Kinzhal missiles had been shown to miss their targets and had proved vulnerable to the Patriot air defence systems originally developed in the 1970s, while the scientists who had contributed to the underlying research were being imprisoned.

Impact on Russian science

The open letter from ITAM colleagues warned that the prosecutions could bring Russian science to a crisis comparable to the massive brain drain that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. "Domestic science may not endure the second such blow," they wrote. T-invariant reported in 2026 that young scientists who had planned to build careers in hypersonic research were "not only leaving the field but abandoning science altogether". The outlet noted that the hypersonics case had ended with a bitter irony: while elderly scientists were being sent to prison, some commentators had proposed reviving the concept of sharashkas, Soviet-era prison laboratories where convicted scientists were forced to continue their research behind bars. In January 2022, the State Duma began promoting the idea of creating "design bureaus of the mobilisation type", which observers noted were functionally identical to sharashkas. The article noted the cruel symbolism that Zvegintsev himself was listed as a co-inventor on a patent for an "under-barrel grenade launcher munition for destroying unmanned aerial vehicles", filed in November 2025, more than two years after his arrest, raising the question of whether imprisoned scientists were already being put to work on defence-related inventions.

Connection to the Safronov case

The hypersonics prosecutions shared institutional and personnel connections with the treason case against journalist Ivan Safronov, who had worked as a defence reporter for Kommersant and Vedomosti and later as an adviser to the head of Roscosmos. Safronov was arrested in July 2020 and in September 2022 sentenced to 22 years for allegedly passing state secrets to Czech and German intelligence, charges he denied. The lead FSB investigator in the Safronov case, Alexander Chaban, was the same officer who had visited Lapygin in prison, and who handled the Kudryavtsev investigation. T-invariant described Chaban as having "built a system of simplified investigation into treason cases, inducing suspects to cooperate with state-appointed lawyers in exchange for relatively mild sentences". Pavlov, who represented both Kudryavtsev and Safronov, was himself detained in April 2021 and subsequently forced into exile, with Amnesty International describing him as "one of the country's most courageous lawyers" whose persecution was "a travesty of justice".

Summary of cases

Scientist	Institution	Arrested	Age at arrest	Alleged recipient	Outcome	Sentence
Vladimir Lapygin	TsNIIMash	May 2015	75	China	Convicted Sept 2016; paroled Aug 2020	7 years
Viktor Kudryavtsev	TsNIIMash	July 2018	74	Belgium (Von Karman Institute)	Died April 2021 (lung cancer)	N/A
Roman Kovalyov	TsNIIMash / MIPT	June 2019	56	Belgium (TransHyBerian / SACOMAR)	Convicted June 2020; released April 2022; died two weeks later (cancer)	7 years
Sergei Meshcheryakov	TsNIIMash	July 2019	77	Germany (NEOShield-2 project)	House arrest; outcome unknown	Unknown
Anatoly Gubanov	TsAGI	December 2020	63	Netherlands / ESA (HEXAFLY-INT)	Convicted October 2023	12 years
Valery Golubkin	TsAGI / MIPT	April 2021	71	Netherlands (HEXAFLY-INT)	Convicted July 2023; upheld Jan 2025	12 years
Alexander Kuranov	NIPGS, St Petersburg	August 2021	73	Foreign nationals (Ayaks project)	Convicted April 2024 (cooperated)	7 years
Anatoly Maslov	ITAM, Novosibirsk	June 2022	75	Germany	Convicted May 2024; appeal rejected Sept 2024	14 years
Dmitry Kolker	Institute of Laser Physics, Novosibirsk	30 June 2022	54	China (lectures)	Died 3 July 2022 (pancreatic cancer, in custody)	N/A
Alexander Shiplyuk	ITAM Director, Novosibirsk	August 2022	55	China (conference)	Convicted September 2024; upheld Sept 2025	15 years
Valery Zvegintsev	ITAM, Novosibirsk	April 2023	79	Iran (journal publication)	Convicted May 2026; under appeal	12.5 years
Vladislav Galkin	Tomsk Polytechnic University	April 2023	68	Iran (co-author)	Convicted May 2026; under appeal	12.5 years

See also

• Hypersonic flight
• Hypersonic weapon
• Sharashka
• Federal Security Service
• Academic freedom
• Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
• Ivan Pavlov (lawyer)
• Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
• Ivan Safronov
• Dmitry Kolker

References

This article "Prosecution of Russian hypersonic scientists" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Prosecution of Russian hypersonic scientists. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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