The Tomsk Regional Court sentenced Anton Klimkin, a researcher at the Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics, to 2.5 years in a general regime colony on charges of “confidential cooperation” with a foreign organization (Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code). The press service of the court reported this to Mediazona.
Klimkin was detained at his workplace in September 2023, the scientist’s wife Natalya Emelina told Mediazona. The case materials were submitted to the court in March 2024, and the entire process lasted three months — the verdict was announced on June 5. It is unknown what exactly Klimkin is accused of — the hearings were held behind closed doors. The scientist’s wife told Mediazona that she is “not yet ready” to comment on the criminal case against her husband.
A researcher at the Laboratory of Atmospheric Absorption Spectroscopy, Anton Klimkin, studied the work of lidars— directional laser locators, which allow you to receive and process information about remote objects. In 2019, the Institute of Atmospheric Optics announced the creation of the China-Russia Research Center for Atmospheric Optics, the work of which involved “joint research, publications and exchange of collaborators.”
Klimkin’s works, written in collaboration with other scientists, are in the public domain, his colleague tells Mediazona Viktor Sukharev. The last of the scientific works, where Anton Klimkin is listed as an author, is called “Calculation of the coordinates of a lidar sensing object and its 3D cartographic display”, it was published in November 2023, after the scientist was detained.
According to Sukharev, his graduate student Zhang Shuo, a young scientist from China, was detained along with Klimkin in September 2023. Under the guidance of Klimkin, he wrote his dissertation “Lidar software and hardware complex for spatial mapping of aerosol plumes,” but did not defend it in June 2024. Judging by the information on the website of the Institute of Optics, in May of this year his dissertation was withdrawn from defense, and Zhang Shuo left Russia, says Sukharev. It is unknown whether the Chinese citizen was subjected to deportation proceedings; Sho did not respond to Mediazona’s message.
Igor Ptashnik, director of the Institute of Atmospheric Optics, told Mediazona that “everyone at the institute knows about the criminal case against Klimkin,” but refused to comment on details.
In recent years, in the case of high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code), security forces have arrested several scientists from Siberia — Vladislav Galkin, Valery Zvegintsev, Anatoly Maslov and Dmitry Kolker. The latter died three days after his arrest in the Moscow Lefotovo pre-trial detention center from pancreatic cancer. Another arrested Siberian scientist, Alexander Shiplyuk, was accused of passing on documents during a scientific conference in China in 2017. He himself insists that the information in question is in the public domain.
In May 2024, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced 77-year-old physicist Anatoly Maslov to 14 years in a maximum security colony in the case of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and a fine. Maslov was the chief researcher at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to the Academ.info publication about the life of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, he was accused of transferring data related to hypersound to China.