PARANOID Putin is gripped by spy mania after arresting at least 12 leading hypersonic missile scientists on suspicion of “high treason”.
The despot’s henchmen have been busy purging eminent aerospace and rocket academics over fears they are leaking secrets to Nato.
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Russia has now charged another professor, Dr Alexander Kuranov, 76, with “high treason” and announced his trial will go ahead.
He is the latest in a list of over a dozen hypersonic scientists – many who have been elderly – arrested in the past six years by Putin’s security service, the brutal FSB.
Insiders have suggested that the ageing tyrant, 71, takes a personal interest in the arrests as he is convinced that traitors are sharing his missile secrets with the West.
However, in each case – their trials have been shrouded in secrecy and evidence against them has not been made public.
The elderly physicist was a major expert on hypersonic technology – something which many of Putin’s prized super-weapons rely upon to travel at speeds vastly faster than the speed of sound.
Hypersonic weapons are central to the major arms race between Russia, the US and China as they each seek to develop faster and more powerful missiles.
Weapons that fall into this category can travel at speeds more than 4,000mph – Mach 5.
Putin has smugly spearheaded the use of these devastating missiles, such as the 9,200mph Kinzhal “Dagger” missiles, which he is using to blitz civilian centres in Ukraine.
Kuranov, will now face a secret trial in St Petersburg after two-and-a-half years of pre-trail detention.
He is accused of passing state secrets to an unspecified NATO country.
Kuranov, the general director and chief designer of the Research Enterprise for Hypersonic Systems (NIPGS) in St Petersburg, is the author of more than 120 scientific articles and patents on hypersonic aircraft and missiles.
He is known to have had dealings with the US and China – approved by the Russian government at the time – concerning the Ajax hypersonic waverider aircraft programme.
But details of the charges against him are not known and his trial will be conducted behind closed doors.
For many years he was organiser of the Russian-American International Symposium “Thermochemical and Plasma Processes in Aerodynamics”
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Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov – who helps defend those accused of spying in Russia – said FSB officers report directly to Putin on treason cases involving spies.
He believes the arrests are largely over scientific cooperation with other states that had been approved by Russia at the time.
The cases are seen as evidence of Mad Vlad’s regime’s increasing paranoia toward scientific cooperation with foreign countries – despite that collaboration having been pre-approved.
But Putin – terrified of traitors – appears to be hellbent on seeking to silence those who know the most about his most secret weapon projects.
The aged scientists are being charged “to stroke the ego, to show that Russian missiles are the best and that they are trying to steal them,” he said.
In July 2022, laser scientist, Dmitry Kolker, 54, was hauled from his cancer hospital bed in Siberia and locked away in notorious Lefortovo jail in Moscow, where he died two days later.
He was one of two leading academics accused of being in a Chinese spy ring by the FSB.
Professor Anatoly Maslov, 75, a pioneer of hypersonic technologies, was also arrested and remains in the Lefortovo prison in Moscow.
In May, 2023, Dr Valery Zvegintsev, 78, was arrested following Ukraine’s downing of what Putin had branded his “unstoppable” weapons, humiliating the tyrant.
In October, 2023, Professor Anatoly Gubanov, 66, one of the world’s top rocket academics was sentenced to 12 years in prison over claims he passed secrets to Nato.
One of his pals, Valery Golubkin, 70, was jailed for months before for 12 years.
In December, 2023, Russia jailed Prof Vladislav Galkin, 68, on suspicion of “high treason” – as part of the same ongoing probe.
Members of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ have previously denounced the Kremlin’s witch-hunt.
They argued that the arrests of their colleagues risk putting Russia behind on hypersonic technologies.
“We simply don’t understand how to continue our craft,” the scientists wrote in an open letter.
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