By Mark Trevelyan
LONDON, May 5 (Reuters) - Two Russian physicists involved in research underpinning the development of hypersonic missiles were convicted of treason on Tuesday and were both sentenced to 12-1/2 years in a penal colony, state media reported.
The trial of Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin, conducted behind closed doors for reasons of state secrecy, was the latest in a series of treason cases against scientists researching super-high flight speeds.
President Vladimir Putin has boasted that Russia is a world leader in the production of hypersonic missiles, which it has deployed in the war with Ukraine. The weapons are capable of travelling at up to 10 times the speed of sound to punch through air-defence systems.
Supporters of the scientists said the prosecutions reflected the zeal of the FSB security service to root out imagined enemies of the state in a field of such importance and sensitivity.
“When a certain area becomes the object of close scrutiny from Putin and the security bosses, a purging of the ranks begins. It’s very important to find traitors there,” said Olga Orlova, editor of a publication called T-Invariant that connects Russian scientists opposed to the Ukraine war.
In a phone interview, Orlova said she was convinced of the men’s innocence, noting that they had made no attempt to leave Russia despite the earlier arrests of some of their peers.
The length of their detention and trials - both were arrested in 2023 - is an indication that neither agreed to any bargain with prosecutors to provide evidence against other colleagues, she said.
Evgeniy Smirnov, a member of a group of exiled human rights lawyers, told Reuters: “Zvegintsev and Galkin are victims of spy mania, persecuted solely for their scientific work.”
The Kremlin does not comment on individual prosecutions but has previously said that some scientists involved in hypersonics research were facing very serious accusations. Putin has repeatedly urged the security services to redouble their efforts to guard against threats at a time of war.
ELITE RESEARCH CENTRE
Zvegintsev, 82, was a top scientist at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM) in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
Two of his colleagues there, Anatoly Maslov and Alexander Shiplyuk, were jailed for 14 and 15 years respectively in 2024.
Galkin, 71, worked at another Siberian university and had co-authored papers with Zvegintsev and Shiplyuk.
Orlova said the two men were in poor health, and the court’s verdict amounted to a death sentence.
In the past decade, Russia has brought at least 10 treason cases against scientists working in the field of hypersonics, the study of flight at speeds exceeding Mach 5 - over 3,800 mph, or 6,115 km/h.
The men had pleaded ‘not guilty’, and supporters have said that their publications and travel to international scientific conferences were cleared in advance by Russian security services.
In a rare open letter in 2023, colleagues of the arrested researchers at ITAM said the men were innocent and that the cases against them were damaging Russian science and deterring young academics from entering the field.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan in LondonEditing by Gareth Jones)
