Top Russian intelligence general ran Ukraine separatists when MH17 was shot down, report finds

One of the men charged over the shootdown of Malaysian airlines flight MH17 has refused to deny taking orders from a senior Russian general who has been named as a potential suspect. Colonel General Andrei Burlaka, the deputy head of the Russian Federal Security Service’s border guards, is four rungs down from Vladimir Putin himself in the FSB chain of command and would be the most senior Russian official implicated in the disaster. According to an investigation published this week, Gen Burlaka directed Russian backed-separatists in Ukraine and was in charge of supplying them with weapons at the time the BUK missile launcher that downed the aircraft crossed the border. The men he directed would have included Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, who was the defence minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and is being prosecuted in the Netherlands for the murders of 298 passengers and crew of the Malaysian airlines flight. Asked by users on his Vkontakte page whether it was true that he answered to Gen Burlaka, Girkin wrote only that "the rebels did not shoot down the Boeing" but would not comment further. <br/>