On June 15, Russian human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov made public that his client, President of the Arctic Academy of Sciences Valery Mitko, had been under house arrest in St. Petersburg since February, accused of transferring to China classified information on detection of submarines. An internationally recognized expert on underwater acoustics, Mitko, 78, served as captain of 1st rank in the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy before obtaining a doctoral degree in technical sciences and authoring hundreds of research articles and two textbooks. Public lectures that he delivered in 2017-2018 at the Dalian Maritime University in China have been used against him as evidence of high treason.
On June 22, a Moscow court sentenced Roman Kovalev, the head of the Center for Heat Transfer and Aerodynamics of Russian rocket-building institute TsNIIMash, to seven years in a maximum-security colony for leaking to the West classified materials on hypersonic vehicles. The transfer of information allegedly occurred in 2011-2013 when TsNIIMash collaborated with the Belgian von Karman Institute of Fluid Dynamics on a project approved by Russia. At a hearing that was closed to the public, Kovalev pled guilty to an undisclosed crime in exchange for a sentence below a mandatory 12-year minimum sentence for high treason. According to Pavlov, anyone accused of treason by the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) has zero chance of acquittal in the Russian court.
Russia’s paranoia about leaked military secrets can be easily traced to two areas in which Russia is competing militarily with the United States and China: nuclear-capable torpedoes and hypersonic ballistic missiles.
The Russian nuclear-powered 80-foot long underwater drone Poseidon, launched from a submarine, is designed to travel 6,000 miles at a depth up to 3,000 feet. Its enormous 250 cubic-feet warhead can carry a record nuclear yield capable of obliterating a large coastal city and surrounding areas. Advanced stealth technology allows Poseidon to evade detection at sea and imitate the noise of a civil ship on the final high-speed approach to the target.
The Russian hypersonic vehicle Avangard, delivered atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, is designed to separate upon entering atmosphere and glide in a zig-zag manner at a speed 27 times the speed of sound. Avangard can carry a 2 megaton nuclear yield. Its high speed and maneuverability allow it to avoid interception by the missile defense system.
Serial production and deployment of new strategic nuclear weapons was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in spring 2018. Soon thereafter, U.S. intelligence released information about Russian tests of new weapons and their characteristics. Similar projects of hypersonic missiles and underwater drones emerged in the United States and China. Russian generals attributed it to the treasonous work of rogue scientists paid by foreign spies. Inspired by the heroic portrayal of KGB in old Russian spy movies, the FSB went to work.
In July 2018, they arrested Alexei Temirev, 64, the head of the company Mechatronica that does research for the Russian Navy and provides equipment for submarines. Temirev was accused of transferring state secrets to Vietnam through his Vietnamese doctoral student. In February 2019, while in prison, Temirev underwent heart surgery. In January 2020, Rostov Regional Court sentenced him to 7.5 years in a maximum-security colony for high treason.
In July 2018, FSB also arrested a Russian expert on aerodynamics of hypersonic vehicles, 74-year-old Victor Kudryavtsev, known for his half-century of research at TsNIIMash on the reentry of a spacecraft into a planet atmosphere. He was accused of high treason for leaking classified information to the von Karman Institute. Kudryavtsev and the Institute denied any exchange of classified data.
While in prison, Kudryavtsev was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. FSB also arrested Sergei Meshcheryakov, 77, who worked with Kudryavtsev. Why is FSB jailing elderly Russian scientists whose life work helped Russia develop its economic and military might? The only explanation that comes to mind is that these scientists are likely to die from natural causes before the spy game played by the FSB becomes apparent.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York and co-chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
