Russian Physicist Receives 12-Year Treason Sentence

A Russian physicist, Anatoly Gubanov, has been sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony on treason charges for allegedly passing secret hypersonic development materials to colleagues from the Netherlands. Gubanov, the former head of the Aerodynamics of Aircrafts and Rockets Department at TsAGI, pleaded guilty but requested a penalty below the minimum sentence, which was denied. The charges against him and his colleague, Valery Golubkin, who was also employed on the project, have raised concerns about the state's increasing paranoia toward scientific cooperation with foreign countries and its potential chilling effect on young researchers.