Identification of Russian soldier looter from Bucha by stolen AirPods

The Molfar OSINT community received a request for help from an anonymous person. We will refer to this person as an "insider" throughout the investigation. The insider reported that during the occupation of the city of Bucha by the Russian military, his house was robbed. Among the stolen items were Apple AirPods, that are connected to the Locator app: it allows you to track the location of the gadget in case of loss or theft. As you may have guessed, the looter did not know about it. The hypothesis that the looter was a Russian military officer has been confirmed during the investigation.

Molfar in social networks 👉 Molfar Global

We cannot establish how many looters robbed the insider's house, but we know for sure that at least one of them survived and returned to the territory of the Russian Federation after fleeing Bucha.

What do you think the robber from Bucha did after he visited his native Russian Federation? That's right! He went on vacation to the sea.

After staying in Gelendzhik for about 1 day, the robber immediately set off on a long journey to Siberia. As it turned out later – to his real home at the place of registration.

Since the standard error in establishing geolocation ranges from 0 to 20 meters, we considered that the actual location of the stolen gadget can be either in house #64 or in neighboring houses at a distance of satellite signal error.

Having found out the approximate place of thief’s living, we started looking for his identity. We found him pretty quickly.

Identification of a Russian looter soldier

With the help of VK, photos were found that indicated the geolocation near houses 62 and 64 on Verkhotomskaya Street, where, according to the gadget tracking data, the headphones were located.

Let's assume that Apple has transmitted the approximate house number by geolocation, and the current address of the headphones is at house number 62.

The photographs (1, 2, 3) were posted on the Russian social network VKontakte by Tatiana Nureyeva (VK, OK1, OK2). Tatiana's son, Nureyev Roman Evgenievich (18.11.1994, [email protected], passport: 3214490927, VK), is a military man, which is confirmed by the leaked Russian databases and the photos on Roman's page. Roman's wife is Kateryna Nureyeva (VK), and the couple has a son.

Roman Nureyev served in the 27th detachment of the Kuzbass Joint Forces (military unit 6607) – the Russian Guard. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Kemerovo soldiers of the Russian Guard are among those involved in the atrocities committed by Russian military personnel in the city of Bucha during its occupation (27.02.2022-31.03.2022).

Roman Nureyev is registered at the house No. 62 on Verkhotomskaya Street, located next to the house whose geolocation is indicated by the Apple service as the location of the stolen headphones.

Now we need one more, controlling confirmation that it is the right house and the correct person. An additional confirmation is never superfluous.

We checked the neighboring houses on the street from all sides, and find out that this is the only house with such a characteristic facade in the specified location. So, we can consider the identification successful. Next, we need to find out more about the identity of the thief.

At this point, we can definitively state that Roman Nureyev, as part of a Russian Guard battalion, was in the zone of a special military operation (on the territory of Ukraine), where he robbed a house and stole the headphones of an insider during the occupation of the city of Bucha by the Russian military. A typical example of a Russian soldier.

We would like to draw the readers' attention: Roman Nureyev is the head of the family. In addition to going to war against a sovereign state for money, he committed a war crime, robbing a civilian house. He then brought the loot back to his home to show off to his family and enjoy the status of "hero of Russia" and "war hero."

For information: the Russian Guard is the so-called "internal army of the Russian Federation". These military formations disperse rallies with demonstrators, beat people with batons and imprison protesters using police cars. In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, according to the Kremlin leadership's propaganda claims, they were supposed to replace police and special services. As we found out, they were not only "keeping order" in the temporarily occupied territories, they were also looting civilian homes. Typical Russian law enforcement officers.

The criminal has been identified: what comes next?

The Bucha massacre is remembered by the world as one of the most brutal acts of genocide committed by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people. The massacre of civilians in Bucha exceeds the number of victims of the bloodiest terrorist attack of the Russian Federation on March 16 in the Mariupol Drama Theater.

According to the official statement of the mayor of Bucha, published on April 7, 90%  of civilian casualties were killed by Russian targeted shootings. As of April 12, according to Mayor Anatoliy Fedorchuk, 403 bodies of civilians killed by Russian occupation forces were found in the city.

The serviceman identified by the Molfar OSINT community belongs to one of the units that committed atrocities in Bucha. Earlier, we identified 1391 servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces belonging to the Eastern Military District, including the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade and other units from the Khabarovsk Territory – the list of war criminals was published by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. We have also identified other enemies of Ukraine: employees of the Russian Federal Security Service and foreign propagandists of Russian Federation terrorists regime.

As long as active hostilities are ongoing, it is almost impossible to bring a criminal to justice. But in general terms, only two scenarios are possible: either he returns to the war in Ukraine and dies at the hands of the Ukraine Defense Forces, or he waits for the complete de-occupation of Ukraine’s territory, and then... As Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, told the head of the Mossad: "Send forth the boys".

✉️ To contact the team and receive a comment, please fill out the form below or send your request to [email protected].