Russian Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov. Photo: EPA-EFE / MAXIM SHIPENKOV

A group of physicists from the United States has written to the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russia’s Science Minister to express concern at the criminal charges being pressed against two of their Russian colleagues and demanding that they be dropped, scientific journal T-Invariant reported on Monday.

The American Physical Society (APS) — a nonprofit membership organisation for physics professionals — wrote to Gennady Krasnikov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Russian Science and Higher Education Minister Valery Falkov in late June, but have yet to receive a reply, T-Invariant said.

The APS letter stressed that Sergey Abramov and Oleg Kabov were innocent men who had been left unable to work while the cases against them go to trial, and expressed their concern at the men’s declining health. Both Abramov and Kabov have at various periods been placed under house arrest, while Abramov has also been held in a psychiatric hospital.

One of Russia’s leading supercomputer experts, Abramov has been charged with financing an extremist organisation for transferring 7,000 rubles (€75) to Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, according to investigators.

Kabov, a laboratory head at the Kutateladze Institute of Thermophysics, a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk is facing charges of large-scale fraud for allegedly receiving money for work he didn’t do, falsifying reports, and embezzlement.