Lawyers defending hypersonic scientists warn: the harsh sentence for scientist Aleksandr Shiplyuk is not an exception to the rule, but the current norm. And the fact that there have been no new arrests of hypersonic scientists for treason in the last nine months is “not a stop, but a pause.” And it was no coincidence that the prosecution asked to give Shiplyuk the maximum possible 20 years: the cruelty of the repressions is influenced by the war in Ukraine. Moreover, in the summer of 2023, amendments were introduced according to which life imprisonment can be given for treason. Such a sentence may await scientists whose “acts”, according to the FSB, were committed after the updated Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation came into force. The first victim of the new “military rules” could be Artem Khoroshilov, a 33-year-old physicist recently accused of treason.
On September 3, the Moscow City Court sentenced Alexander Shiplyuk, director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to 15 years in a strict regime prison (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The court also sentenced him to a fine of 500 thousand rubles and 1.5 years of restricted freedom after his release. The case was heard behind closed doors, without listeners or journalists, and it is unknown how the prosecutor’s office proved the scientist’s guilt. The judge ordered that the dollars, yuan, and euros seized during the investigation be returned to him. The scientist waited for the verdict in the Lefortovo pretrial detention center for more than two years. The scientist’s family was present at the reading of the operative part of the verdict.
Alexander Shiplyuk is 57 years old. His research was related to the experimental aerothermodynamics of hypersonic flows. “Judging by the most cited works of Shiplyuk (and he has articles in leading international publications), this is a completely fundamental science that has no direct relation to specific aircraft: the stability of the boundary layer, the effect of surface coating and small additives. Another thing is that everything related to hypersonics has long been a minefield in Russia,” explains Andrey Tsaturyan, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, to T-invariant.
Alexander Shiplyuk. Photo: Facebook
China is a pretext, not a reason
The FSB has not disclosed what exactly it accuses the scientist of all this time (there were not even leaks through pro-Kremlin media, as often happens in such cases). As T-invariant reported earlier, the formal basis for the charge was Shiplyuk’s participation in a scientific conference in China. But, according to our information, the scientist’s contacts with China are only a pretext, not a reason for the arrests.
Both Shiplyuk and other scientists, also accused of treason in different years, participated in projects of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program TransHyBeriAN (coordinator – Von Karman Institute for Hydrodynamics, Belgium). This is a more realistic basis for prosecution, according to T-invariant sources.
“Probably, according to the ideas of the FSB, a scientist should, carefully disguised, forge a sword or shield for the Motherland, and not communicate with foreigners,” Andrey Tsaturyan reflects.
FSB goes after co-authors
Recall that in less than a year, three employees of the S.A. Khristianovich ITPM of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences were accused of treason, and all of them are being persecuted by the FSB precisely because they were engaged in research related to the topic of hypersonic technologies.
In June 2022, the chief researcher of ITAM Anatoly Maslov, who had been the deputy director of the institute for research work, overseeing the aerodynamic direction for more than twenty years, was arrested. Alexander ShiplYuk called Maslov his teacher and actually became his successor at the institute. Shiplyuk was arrested in August 2022. And then, in April 2023, chief researcher Valery Zvegintsev was arrested. It was Zvegintsev who founded and headed the laboratory “High-Speed Aerogasdynamics” at the institute in 2001. All three were co-authors on most of the scientific articles.
Anatoly Maslov in court. Photo: Reuters / Anton Vaganov
The ITPM employees who remain at large took a natural, but already considered unprecedented step: the institute staff published a letter in defense of their arrested colleagues.
Siberian physicists appealed “to the authorities of the Russian Federation, teams of scientific and industrial organizations, the professional scientific community, as well as to all concerned citizens of our country with a request to protect Russian aerodynamic science, to save what was created over decades of selfless labor of Soviet and Russian scientists, engineers, workers, from the impending collapse!”
Anatoly Zvegintsev. Photo: YouTube (screenshot)
After Zvegintsev’s arrest, it became clear to many: the FSB would now simply go down the list of co-authors of scientific articles. The ITAM employees understood this too. In their letter, they shared their concerns: “In this situation, we are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We simply do not understand how to continue doing our job… The most terrible thing in this situation is the impact of the created atmosphere on young scientists. Already now, the best students refuse to come to work for us, and our best young employees are leaving science…”. The letter has already been removed from ITAM website, but you can read it in full in T-invariant Telegram channel.
The fears turned out to be well-founded. In December 2023, the co-author of three Siberian scientists, Vladislav Galkin, who lives and works in Tomsk, was arrested. Then the founder of the human rights project “First Department” Ivan Pavlov stated T-invariant that the repressive campaign is escalating and absolutely any scientist who worked on this topic as part of international collaborations could become the next victim of the FSB. Neither coordinating the work with a special commission that gives permission for publication in open journals, nor the total silence around the criminal cases, which is created by relatives and lawyers of the accused, with the complete disregard of this tragedy by the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other academic institutions, will help.
Vladislav Galkin
Why such a harsh sentence
“The main thing that such a harsh sentence clearly indicates is the lack of a pre-trial agreement between Shiplyuk and the investigation,” Dmitry Zair-Bek, head of the “First Department,” explains to T-invariant. At the same time, the prosecution requested the maximum possible term for Shiplyuk – 20 years.
Recall that Shiplyuk’s colleague and teacher Anatoly Maslov was sentenced to 14 years in May. Maslov (he is now 77 years old) also waited more than two years for the verdict in the pre-trial detention center, and the security forces were unable to “break” him: he did not admit guilt and refused to cooperate with the investigation. It was previously reportedthat their colleague from St. Petersburg, Alexander Kuranov (he was the CEO and chief designer at the Research and Development Enterprise of Hypersonic Systems, part of the Leninetz concern), on the contrary, cooperated with the investigation and testified against Maslov, at a minimum. Therefore, he received seven years (while the minimum term forosizmenu — 12 years). According to T-invariant, as part of the same pre-trial deal, he also testified against Shiplyuk. The prosecution requested 17 years for Maslova.
This sentence is the harshest among physicists who were accused of treason on the topic of hypersonics, and one of the largest among other cases of treason against scientists in general. Only Alexey Vorobyov, associate professor of the Rocket Engines Department at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), PhD in Engineering, received more — 20 years.
“There is no statute of limitations for such cases”
In recent years, more than 10 research fellows have been convicted under the article on treason. It is believed that Russian President Putin is very proud of hypersonic weapons and regularly talks about them in his speeches. At the same time, it is the scientists involved in hypersonics who are becoming easy prey for the FSB. The academic community is perplexed in its rare public reactions.
“Over the past year, three outstanding aerodynamic scientists from our institute have been arrested on suspicion of committing a crime under the most severe article of the criminal code – “High treason”. Their competencies and reputation allowed them to find highly paid and prestigious work abroad, but they did not leave their homeland, devoting their lives to Russian science. We know each of them as a patriot and a decent person, incapable of doing what the investigative bodies suspect them of,” the ITAM employees write in the text of their collective letter.
“The hypersonic horror continues. It seems that FSB investigators have found a gold mine (in the sense of stars on their shoulder straps) and are diligently developing it. Should they immediately “run away”, at least from the sensitive topic of hypersonics? I’m not sure that there is any point, given that there are no statute of limitations here, there are not enough stars for everyone, and the work of alchemists to extract them from scientists is not dusty and has been bearing fruit for nine years already, if you count from the arrest of Vladimir Lapygin. Then academics and others stood up for him en masse. Now we are all rather surprised that the employees of the Novosibirsk Institute named after S.A. Khristianovich was not afraid to stand up for Alexander Shiplyuk and his two colleagues,” Andrey Tsaturyan believes.
There is a high probability that the “hypersonic horror” will not end with Shiplyuk’s sentence. As T-invariant wrote earlier, the special services had irrefutable evidence that there was some kind of leak of information related to this topic. In any case, this was indirectly confirmed by the lawyers in 2018, commenting on the court hearing in the case of Viktor Kudryavtsev. Then “the investigators had a ‘joker’ in the form of operational information prepared by a high-ranking intelligence officer. It looked like the intelligence services had discovered a leak of classified information and linked it to scientists conducting research on hypersonics.” And since the process is completely closed to the public and to professional unbiased expertise, it is not possible to refute the picture of the world that has formed in the minds of the FSB. This means that any scientist who has come to the attention of the intelligence services in connection with publications on the topic of hypersonics is now at risk.
“I am sure that the FSB and prosecutors would like to give the scientists life imprisonment”
T-invariant discussed with lawyer Ivan Pavlov how to perceive such a harsh sentence for Alexander Shiplyuk and what other physicists in Russia should now prepare for.
Ivan Pavlov. Photo: https://www.currenttime.tv
T-invariant: What does today’s verdict against Alexander Shiplyuk indicate?
Ivan Pavlov: Scientists are elderly people, and the court could determine the sanction closer to the minimum. But it is wartime, and there is demand for such cases from a variety of forces, from different sides. I am sure that this is not the last case, there will be others against scientists.
T-i: Why are the FSB and the investigation so uncompromisingly disposed towards Alexander Shiplyuk?
IP:A lot depends on various circumstances, right down to the judge’s mood on the day the verdict is announced. It is not so important why Shiplyuk was given 15 years and Maslov 14. Why was Vorobyov ultimately given 20 years? Because he had more episodes and each court assigned its ownterm. The punishment for treason alone is 14 years. Therefore, it is almost always a range: from 12 to 20 years. Yes, there were cases when they gave the minimum, 12 years, for example, to our client, physicist Valery Golubkin. But here we must understand that in the case of Shiplyuk, as with many other scientists, when it is obvious that he is completely innocent, a completely unsuitable legal approach is used and the security forces are actually re-evaluating everything that was previously considered the norm, but now suddenly became a crime. For example, the same Golubkin participated in an international project that was approved by all government agencies.
He was simply responsible for drafting documents and sending them to partners at the direction of his immediate superiors. He had all the positive conclusions on hand that there were no state secrets and that this could be sent to colleagues on an international project. But then the political attitude towards academic cooperation between countries changed in Russia. What was considered the norm became the basis for imprisonment with the most severe terms, which are given to murderers.
T-i:Why did the prosecution ask for 20 years?
IP:I myself do not understand where such ferocity comes from. Perhaps personal hostility. Although it is unclear where it came from, the trial is closed. Maybe the prosecutor is simply illiterate and decided to act according to the logic: “there is a war going on, let’s give 20 years to a traitor to the state.” This cannot be ruled out either. In the last year, the maximum term for treason has changed: for acts committed from the summer of 2023 to the present, life imprisonment can be awarded. But since the cases of Shiplyuk and his colleagues are older and their “acts” occurred before these amendments, the maximum punishment is 20 years. In this sense, they are “lucky.” I am 100% sure that the FSB and prosecutors would like to give them life imprisonment, there is no doubt about that.
T-i: Physicist Alexander Kuranov also received a term for treason, albeit seven years. Is this because he entered into a pre-trial agreement and testified against other people?
IP: Probably. Usually, those who testify against someone do so under a pre-trial cooperation agreement. The person must admit their guilt and give incriminating testimony against a third party. That is, inform on someone. These are two mandatory conditions to get less than 12 years in a treason case. That’s the state price now.
T-i: Why does Kuranov only have a state defense attorney?
IP: And that’s part of the deal. The FSB often makes it a condition to refuse a defense attorney. So as not to complicate their own lives and so that there is less information.
T-i: Since December 2023, when Vladislav Galkin, a physicist from Tomsk and co-author of scientists from ITAM, was arrested, no other arrests of hypersonic scientists have been reported. What next with this huge case, which already involves more than 12 scientists working on this topic?
IP: This is a pause, not a stop. Other physicists and co-authors are at risk. They have already been witnesses, and some had to leave the country.
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Text: Editorial Board of T-invariant
Editors 4.09.2024