66-year-old Anatoli Gubanov was arrested in 2020 for passing on confidential documents about the Russian aviation industry. He worked at a physics institute in Moscow and specialized in the aerodynamics of aircraft. ‘TASS’ writes that Gubanov partially admitted his guilt during the trial, but that he later withdrew this because his lawyer believed that he had been misled during the interrogation.
In June, Gubanov’s colleague Valeri Golubkin was also sentenced to twelve years in a penal colony for the same offense. According to Golubkin, he had been instructed by Gubanov to share information with fellow scientists in the context of the international project HEXAFLY-int, the Russian Free Press wrote in June. That project is coordinated by the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC), a research center of the European Space Agency ESA that is located in Noordwijk, Netherlands.
Golubkin also said there were no state secrets in the documents, a claim shared by human rights activists, according to the Russian Free Press.
The Russian parliament agreed in April to increase penalties for treason. Convicts can now get life in prison. There are still cases pending against three other rocket scientists from an institute in Siberia. They have also been charged with treason.