A Russian court on Tuesday (3) sentenced physicist Alexander Shiplyuk to 15 years in prison on charges of treason, in the latest case against experts working on Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles.
Shiplyuk, 57, was the director of a leading Siberian scientific institute and was arrested in August 2022. Two of his colleagues, Anatoly Maslov and Valery Zvegintsev, were also detained on suspicion of treason. Maslov, 78, was given a 14-year sentence in May.
Shiplyuk’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment asking whether the scientist planned to appeal the sentence, as reported by Russian news agencies.
The trial was held behind closed doors, as is customary in treason trials in Russia.
Commenting on the case of Shiplyuk and his colleagues last May, the Kremlin said they faced “very serious charges,” adding that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the security services.
“World leader in hypersonic missiles”
Russia calls itself a world leader in hypersonic missiles, state-of-the-art weapons capable of carrying payloads at up to 10 times the speed of sound to bypass air defense systems.
The trio from the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM) in Novosibirsk are among nearly a dozen scientists researching the technology against whom Russia has opened treason cases in recent years.
Two people familiar with Shiplyuk’s case told Reuters that the ITAM director was suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017.
The sources stressed that he has pleaded not guilty and insisted that the information in question was not confidential and was freely available online.
Several other Russian scientists arrested for alleged treason have also been accused of handing over secrets to China, according to state media.
Shiplyuk’s institute, located at the Akademgorodok science campus near the city of Novosibirsk, says on its website that it is registered as part of Russia’s military-industrial complex.
Two U.S. scientists who knew Maslov and Shiplyuk told Reuters last year that the arrested Russians were involved in an element of the work needed to build a hypersonic missile, a process that also includes integrating sensors, navigation and propulsion systems.
This content was originally published in Russia sentences hypersonic missile scientist to 15 years in prison for treason on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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