Three Russian scientists who worked on hypersonic missiles, which should (should?) be among the jewels in Moscow’s arsenal, are at risk of treason charges. The news was broke by the Kremlin itself the day after Ukrainian forces destroyed six of the latest generation missiles in a single night in the recent all-out airstrike on Kiev. The three Siberian academics Anatoly Maslov, Aleksandr Shiplyuk and Valery Swegintsev face “very serious” charges, the Kremlin said, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov threatened that the investigation was now in the hands of the security services. The case deeply worries the scientific community and actually predates the last failed airstrike on Kiev, if it is true that as early as Monday – as Portal reports – an appeal signed by colleagues in solidarity with the three hypersonic weapons specialists was widely circulated to call their to defend innocence and to express all their concern about the damage that such a procedure could do to Russian science.
“We know them individually as patriots and worthy people who would never be able to do what the authorities suspect them of,” read the open letter, which the Kremlin admitted to having read. Colleagues conducting research at Itam, the Novosibirsk Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Siberia, point out in particular that the material presented by the three scientists in international forums or publications has always been repeatedly checked to ensure that it does not contain confidential information. If the logic of the ongoing investigations is upheld, the other researchers write openly, then “every article or report could lead to allegations of high treason”. “In such a situation, we not only fear for the fate of our colleagues. We just don’t know how we’re supposed to continue doing our job,” the scientists comment explicitly. Enough to stem the Kremlin’s revenge on the three scapegoats of the hypersonic defeat?
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