A journal article — an article on treason

Physicists Valery Zvyagintsev (82) and Vladislav Galkin (71) have been sentenced to 12.5 years' imprisonment in a strict-regime penal colony for disclosing information constituting a state secret by publishing their article in an Iranian scientific journal, which is equated with transferring such information to a foreign party (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — high treason).

Valery Zvyagintsev is one of the leading scientists in the field of aerodynamics.

Prior to publication, the article was reviewed by an expert commission of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which concluded that the materials contained ‘no restricted information'.

The subject of the article — gas dynamics — was directly related to the development of air intakes for hypersonic missiles, including the ‘Kinzhal' and ‘Zircon'.

If the physicists intended to transfer classified information to a foreign recipient in this very way, why then would they publicise the fact that it was them who had done so? If they were able to transfer the information to an Iranian scientific journal — which is not difficult in the age of the internet — they could have transferred it in the same way, without revealing their identities, to any other recipient.