These arrests were made public in an open letter from the staff of RAS Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, published on May 16.
According to the letter, Valery Zvegintsev, head of the aerodynamics lab of at the institute, has been arrested on charges of high treason.
"The past year has seen the arrest of three prominent aerodynamics scientists at our institute – Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk, and Valery Zvegintsev – on suspicion of committing a crime under the graves article the Criminal Code – high treason," the letter reads.
According to Russian media reports, Zvegintsev was detained three weeks ago on charges of publishing scholarly work on gas dynamics in a foreign scientific journal. The scientist is currently under house arrest.
Shiplyuk was arrested in early August 2022, and at the end of June, Anatoly Maslov was also arrested on suspicion of high treason. Both scientists were detained at Lefortovo detention center in Moscow.
According to The Moscow Times, Shiplyuk and Maslov have been working on hyper-sonic missile research for over ten years. They presented an experimental design for this weapon in 2012 at a scientific conference in France. Four years later, they published a joint article on hyper-sonic aerodynamics.