Russian scientists stopped involvement in hypersonic missile development after FSB hunted them as ‘spies’

The persecution of scientists who have been involved in hypersonic missile research is actually killing this branch of science. No one wants to be the next in a long line of people accused of treason for their work in this field, including in state-approved projects, writes the Moscow Times.

Courts have already sentenced four physicists to prison terms ranging from 12 to 15 years. The latest, in early September, was Aleksander Shipliuk, director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who has spent more than 10 years developing hypersonic missiles. He, as well as other researchers, was found guilty of treason: he allegedly passed classified data to China at a scientific conference in 2017. Šipliuk pleaded not guilty.

One of the first to be charged with treason in 2018 was Viktor Kudryavtsev. Viktor Kudriavtsev is a leading specialist of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIIMash). The scientist did not live to see his trial: after a year and two months in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center (75-year-old Kudriavtsev became the center’s oldest inmate), he was released on own liability for health reasons and died in early 2021. Two other elderly scientists, Dmitri Kolker (head of the Laboratory of Quantum Optical Technologies at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and Roman Kovalev (head of the Center for Heat Transfer and Aerogasdynamics of TsNIIMash), who were suffering from cancer, were arrested and died shortly afterwards.

The actions of the FSB created an atmosphere of fear in the scientific community. While other researchers await trial, many scientists have stopped doing significant research in the field of hypersonics and high-speed aerodynamics, Viktor Kudryavtsev’s son Yaroslav, also a physicist, told the Wall Street Journal currently in Paris.

“This is simply sabotage by the authorities”

“This is simply sabotage by the authorities and, first of all, harms Russian science. By trying to maintain secrecy in military research, they are practically killing civilian science in these areas. Many of those accused of treason were not even involved in military research. Viktor Kudriavtsev, for example, was working within a European scientific program approved and partially funded by the Russian government,” says Yaroslav. But when the spy hunt began, his father became an easy target because he was a coordinator on the Russian side. “Scientific exchanges were made through him. He was arrested because he was the person passing on information to the Western participants in the project“, says Yaroslav Kudriavtsev.

The program “pretty clearly excluded military research,” according to a letter of support for Kudriavtsev published in 2019 by Belgium’s Fond Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.

The FSB is initiating these cases in part “to convince itself and Putin that Russia does indeed have advanced scientific achievements and that spies around the world are trying to steal them,” First Department lawyer Evgheni Smirnov, who defended defendants in treason cases, including scientists. Earlier, Smirnov said that in private conversations FSB officers admitted that the arrests on charges of passing classified information about Russian hypersonic weapons were made “on demand”. Investigators have explicitly said that they report to Putin about every such case against scientists, Smirnov noted.

A total of 12 people involved in basic hypersonic and aerodynamic research have been arrested in such cases over the past six years, the BBC’s Russian service calculated earlier this year. The FSB began hunting the scientists in 2018 after Vladimir Putin presented hypersonic missiles “unparalleled in the world” in his speech to the Federal Assembly. The new weapon will be able to overcome all modern missile defense systems and will be “virtually invulnerable,” the Kremlin leader said.