IRON CURTAIN
Putin gripped by spy mania as Russian cops arrest 12 top scientists over fears ‘hypersonic secrets being leaked to Nato’
For six years, Putin's ruthless security service has been locking up elderly scientists in a neurotic witch-hunt
PARANOID Putin has been 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 top aerospace and rocket experts 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 of whom are elderly - arrested in the past six years by Putin's feared security service, the brutal FSB.
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, insiders have suggested.
The trials have been shrouded in secrecy and evidence against the defendants has not been made public.
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Dr Kuranov was a leading expert on hypersonic technology - something which many of Putin's prized super-weapons rely upon to travel at speeds faster than sound.
Hypersonic weapons are central to the arms race between Russia, the US and China, as 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.
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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.
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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 increasing paranoia.
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,” Smirnov 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.
It came four months after one of his pals, Valery Golubkin, 70, was jailed 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.
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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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