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The director of a top Russian science institute, arrested on suspicion of treason along with two other hypersonic missile technology experts, stands accused of betraying secrets to China, sources told Reuters.
Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia’s Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017, the sources said.
The 56-year-old maintains his innocence and insists the information in question wasn’t classified and was freely available online, according to the people.
“He is convinced of the fact that the information was not secret, and of his own innocence,” one of the people said.
20,000 troops killed in Bakhmut, says Wagner boss
The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about 20 per cent of the 50,000 Russian convicts he recruited to fight in the 15-month war dying in the eastern Ukrainian city.
The figure was in stark contrast with claims from Moscow that it lost just over 6,000 troops in the war, and is higher than the official estimate of the Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979-89.
