Donbas Doubles: The Search for Girkin and Plotnitsky's Cover Identities

The most interesting aspect to me is that they were able to correlate the identities from data purchase from online markets. In a linked to article it is further described:

>Much of the information we used for our investigations could never be found in most Western countries, but in Russia, is readily available either for free or a fairly modest fee. Additionally, Russian email providers, such as Mail.ru and Rambler, and social networks, such as Vkontakte, are far less secure and privacy-focused than their Western equivalents, leading to frequent data leaks and robust search functions.

Due to porous data protection measures in Russia, it only takes some creative Googling (or Yandexing) and a few hundred euros worth of cryptocurrency to be fed through an automated payment platform, not much different than Amazon or Lexis Nexis, to acquire telephone records with geolocation data, passenger manifests, and residential data.