This week, news came of another scientist accused of treason — 33-year-old physicist Artem Khoroshilov. According to friends and colleagues, the scientist “practically did not know how to program.” Nevertheless, the FSB declared him a hacker who, on orders from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, organized “attacks on critical information infrastructure facilities.” As evidence, the security forces presented the public with “ribbons and badges with the Ukrainian flag.” Meanwhile, due to the aggravation of the charges, the employee of the Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences may face life imprisonment. T-invariant tells what is known about the case today.
Several sources of T-invariant reported that the case concerns a research fellow at the A.M. Prokhorov RAS Artem Khoroshilov. The charge of treason (under which dozens of scientists are currently being tried) appeared later – the FSB reported this through its Public Relations Center on August 20.
The FSB claims that an unnamed employee of a scientific organization “attacked critical facilities, carried out DDoS attacks, collected information about the military, and transferred money to the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services.” Through RIA Novosti, the FSB distributed a video recording of the arrest, which shows that the action takes place in winter: there are snowdrifts all around. The same recording shows photographs with bracelets, a ribbon, and a badge with Ukrainian flags. It remains unclear from the video whether there is a connection between Khoroshilov’s activities and this symbolism, and whether it belongs to him. There are several seconds of footage from the courtroom where the suspect’s measure of restraint is being chosen. The accused’s face was hidden during video editing.
The research fellow faces a life sentence (previously, the maximum possible punishment was eight years in prison). T-invariant was unable to obtain comments from Khoroshilov’s defense (as in other cases with scientists accused of treason, lawyers do not provide comments to the media and do not advise their relatives to do so). However, we were able to talk to several friends and colleagues of Artem Khoroshilov and find out some details.
Artem Khoroshilov. Photo: https://repetit.ru
Khoroshilov is 33 years old, he grew up in the Moscow region and entered MIPT in 2008, where he graduated with a master’s degree in 2014. The most standard comment from fellow students: “an ordinary guy, a little withdrawn, an average student, but his studies were also very difficult.” According to friends and colleagues, Khoroshilov has close relatives in Ukraine and “parents from there.” At the same time (at least since 2008), the young man has not been noticed in any active social, political or radical actions or even statements. This was confirmed both by Khoroshilov’s acquaintances and in the largest activist community of MIPT, where any public and political activity of students and employees of MIPT is usually coordinated (the channel has about 900 people).
After MIPT, Khoroshilov began working at the A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute (GPI RAS) in the Low Temperature and Cryogenic Engineering Department. The topic of his dissertation is “Features of magnetotransport and heat capacity of HoXLu1-XB12 frame glasses”.
Khoroshilov was also not noticed as an active user of social networks. One of T-invariant’s interlocutors, who studied with him for six years and worked side by side for seven years, said that he did not have “even a normal VKontakte account.” “Artem loved to play computer games and read. Yesterday I suddenly realized that in 13 years of close communication and work we do not even have common photos,” says the scientist (he preferred to remain anonymous).
«All this time he was very unsociable, he had very few friends. I would never have thought that he could start to show some kind of political position. I saw the news and at first I was just stunned by what I read. And I can’t read about his hacking and attacks on infrastructure without laughing. Artyom, of course, understood something about computers, but he is definitely not a hacker, he barely knew how to program. This is some kind of absurdity,” says Khoroshilov’s colleague.
The scientist’s friends and colleagues do not believe the accusations of organizing DDoS attacks.
“You need to understand how it works. Your computer can be part of some botnet and you may not even know that you are currently participating in a DDoS attack. But Artyom could not have been the organizer. Firstly, he was too lazy for this. I would describe him as a rather passive person in everything. Not all physicists are hackers,” says Khoroshilov’s colleague.
In recent years, judicial and law enforcement practice in cases of attacks on critical information infrastructure facilities (Article 274 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) has changed dramatically, the interviewees explain what happened T-invariant lawyers. “It’s a big question what the FSB or the court can recognize as such an attack. It’s either some trivial things or something very serious, there’s no middle ground. This became possible thanks to the addition of Part 1 to Article 274,” the lawyer explains. Previously, to be charged under this article, it was necessary to prove damages in the amount of 1 million rubles. The number of cases under consideration was small, and only cases of causing major damage remained in production. But the article removed the minimum threshold for liability: many more guilty verdicts began to be issued.
“I don’t remember us discussing the topic of Ukraine often since 2014. In our company, there was one general opinion until 2022 that this topic should not be touched on at all. All of our colleagues understood what was happening well, expressed dissatisfaction, but did not particularly publicly express an anti-war position. The relationships in our research group were smooth, senior colleagues supported us, so publications were published in serious journals, that’s how it usually works,” explains a friend of the physicist.
It is also known that Artem Khoroshilov worked part-time as a tutor, his questionnaire is on many specialized sites. In it, he indicated that he has 15 years of experience working with schoolchildren in mathematics and physics. At the same time, most of the pages on the GPI RAS website where Khoroshilov is mentioned are no longer available: error 404.
Write to us in the chat bot 👉🏿@invariant2023_bot or by email [email protected], if you know Artem Khoroshilov or you know the circumstances of his detention and persecution since December 2023. We guarantee anonymity.
Text: Editorial office of T-invariant
Editors 22.08.2024