Russian physicist Anatoly Maslov has been convicted of treason, according to the press service for courts in the city of Saint Petersburg.
On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony. Maslov, 77, who protests his innocence, is among a string of eminent Russian scientists to have been charged with treason in recent years.
He and a number of the others had conducted theoretical work in areas relevant to the development of hypersonic missiles – cutting-edge weapons capable of carrying payloads at up to 10 times the speed of sound to punch through air-defence systems.
Maslov was accused of sharing top-secret data related to Russia’s hypersonic missile programme with Germany.
Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev, two other scientists from the same Siberian institute, all specialists in hypersonics, who have also been arrested since 2022 on treason charges, are awaiting trial.
President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that Russia is a world leader in this field of weaponry.
Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov of Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association that specialises in defending people in cases of treason and espionage, said the charges against the three scientists were approximately the same – leaking information considered a state secret while participating in an international conference or research.
“Any conviction against Maslov is a gross violation of the law,” he told the Reuters news agency.
“I am sure that Maslov is not guilty of the acts accused of him and is a victim of the policies of the Russian authorities.”
