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Gen. Burlaka is the senior-most Russian official who remained unidentified in the criminal investigation. According to data disclosed by the JIT, he played a crucial role in supervising military operations in Eastern Ukraine and controlling the flow of arms across the border.pic.twitter.com/2taNRu8IdO

A series of phone intercepts published by JIT in November 2019 included calls with a mysterious Russian high-ranking officer, whom everyone called "Vladimir Ivanovich". The calls made it clear that at the time of MH17 downing, he held the key to weapons transfer across the borderpic.twitter.com/1LVlTZR0bg

"Vladimir Ivanovich" appeared also in position to order cross-border attacks against Ukrainian forces, and was setting military tasks to Igor Girkin - the main indicted suspect in the MH17 criminal case.pic.twitter.com/bpVNKBpo9S

The context of the intercepts made clear that "Vladimir Ivanovich" was a senior FSB officer. He communicated with militant commanders in Donbas via an encrypted, FSB-issued telephone. But who was he? That remained a mystery ... until nowpic.twitter.com/QVPJE9fRzo

Together with our partners from @the_ins_ru, we spent months chasing clues about "Vladimir Ivanovich"'s true identity. Using the two telephone numbers published by JIT, we found a third linked phone number, that showed us a potential full name: Vladimir Ivanovich Burlak.pic.twitter.com/MpHeHeH5k7

Then we decided to search for references of "Vladimir Ivanovich" in dozens of old hacked emails or messenger communications leaked over the years by either side in the Russia-Ukraine war. We soon found a match in a leaked Viber chat archive belonging to a Donbas militant.pic.twitter.com/mPeX5sZ0nT

Based on this new potential lead, we searched for all senior FSB officers whose first and middle (patronymic) names were Andrey Ivanovich. We quickly stumbled upon a last name we recognized from that phone number look-up: Andrey Ivanovich Burlakapic.twitter.com/XsHp2SPA3b

Colonel General Andrey Burlaka is First Deputy to the Director of FSB's Border Service, and in charge of operations for Russia's gigantic border-guarding apparatus. He is in fact just one position removed from FSB's boss.pic.twitter.com/yp7MJJAuzH

Col. Gen. Andrey Burlaka checked all the boxes for the mysterious Vladimir Ivanovich: but could we be sure it was him? We needed to hear his voice to compare to the intercepts with Vladimir Ivanovich. We found a short TV interview Burlaka had given in 2013 and the voice matched!pic.twitter.com/g2Hv30Vv9A

We couldn't find a TV interview containing a longer speech segment. But we stumbled upon a used TV set for sale on a classified-ad site. The photo of the TV set showed Burlaka talking on camera. We had not previously found such an interview.pic.twitter.com/2EXQxoezCK

We could see that the TV channel was TV Zvezda: Russia's Ministry of Defense conspiracy-inclined TV channel. We could see the date on which the classified was posted. So we checked all shows on that day... and boom: we found a long documentary on Russia's border service.pic.twitter.com/lJzQtAAAq8

We watched that intriguing documentary in tribute of the 100th anniversary of the Border Service. And at 28th minute, we struck gold: there was a long stretch of Gen. Burlaka describing the trials and tribulations of FSB border guards. it was the same shot as in the classified adpic.twitter.com/fQbyrfA36T

We submitted the longer audio from this documentary, along with the JIT intercepts of "Vladimir Ivanovich", to the National Forensic Media Center at the University of Denver Colorado. Their conclusion was: a moderate support for an identity match.pic.twitter.com/az5zn6q84u

These showed that he had traveled to and from Rostov (the control center for Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine) exactly at the times when Vladimir Ivanovich was known to have been there - based on the intercepts. In particular, on the day of the MH17 downing.pic.twitter.com/cn5MlRyUMh