[40][41] In the months prior to 17 July, reports circulated in the media on the presence of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, in the hands of the rebels that were fighting the Ukrainian government in eastern Ukraine.

[3]: 217  The American Federal Aviation Administration issued restrictions on flights over Crimea, to the south of MH17's route, and advised airlines flying over some other parts of Ukraine to "exercise extreme caution".

[105][106] Australian officials had believed that as many as 80 bodies were still at the site,[107] but after some days of searching the international team had "found remains of only a few victims" and concluded that "the recovery effort undertaken by local authorities immediately after the crash was more thorough than initially thought.

[166] Ballistics specialist Stephan Fruhling of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre concurred with this, explaining that since it struck the cockpit rather than an engine it was probably a radar guided, rather than heat seeking, missile equipped with a proximity fuzed warhead such as a Buk.

[167] Shortly after the crash, Igor Girkin, leader of the Donbas separatists, was reported to have posted on social media network VKontakte, taking credit for downing a Ukrainian An-26.

[176] On 19 July 2014, Vitaly Nayda, the chief of the Counter Intelligence Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), told a news conference, "We have compelling evidence that this terrorist act was committed with the help of the Russian Federation.

[185][186][187] Journalists from the Associated Press in Snizhne, Ukraine reported seeing a Buk M-1 enter the town operated by a man "with unfamiliar fatigues and a distinctive Russian accent" escorted by two civilian vehicles, which then moved off in the direction where the shoot-down later occurred.

[107][190][191] On 28 July 2014, Ukrainian security official Andriy Lysenko announced, at a press conference, that black box recorder analysis had revealed that the aircraft had been brought down by shrapnel that caused "massive explosive decompression."

[206] Other circumstantial evidence was presented separately by various parties that supported this version, identifying specific launcher vehicle, operator name, truck transporting it and its alleged route through Russia and Ukraine.

[207] In March 2015, Reuters published statements from named witnesses from Chervonyi Zhovten (Ukrainian: Червоний Жовтень), close to Torez and Snizhne, who said they saw the Buk rocket passing over the village when it was fired from a field around 1.5 km away.

It also published a statement from a witness who was said to be a separatist fighter (referred to by first name only) who confirmed that the launcher was placed in that area on the day of the Boeing crash to prevent Ukrainian airstrikes.

[209] In May 2016, Stratfor released satellite imagery taken five hours before the crash which showed a Russian Buk system travelling on a flatbed truck east through Makiivka, 40 km away from Snizhne.

Fragments from the exploding warhead killed the three people in the cockpit and caused structural damage to the airliner leading to an in-flight break-up resulting in a wreckage area of 50 square kilometres (19 sq mi) and loss of the lives of all 298 occupants.

[1] In December 2014, in a letter to the Security Council, the Netherlands' United Nations representative wrote that "the Dutch government is deliberately refraining from any speculation or accusations regarding legal responsibility for the downing of MH17".

The video presented a "scenario" in which a Buk missile was transported on a Volvo low loader truck from Sievernyi (Сєверний), a town located within a kilometre of the Russian border (near Krasnodon), to Donetsk during the night of 16/17 July.

[229] On 28 September 2016, the JIT gave a press conference in which it concluded that the aircraft was shot down with a 9M38 Buk missile fired from a rebel-controlled field near Pervomaisky (Первомайський), a town 6 km (3.7 mi) south of Snizhne.

[1] During the investigation, the JIT recorded and assessed five billion internet pages, interviewed 200 witnesses, collected half a million photos and videos, and analysed 150,000 intercepted phone calls.

[128][230] According to JIT head prosecutor Fred Westerbeke the criminal investigation is based on "immense body of evidence," including testimonies of live witnesses who saw the Buk launcher, primary radar data, original photos and videos.

[244] In June 2015, the Netherlands, supported by the other JIT members, sought to create an international tribunal to prosecute those suspected of downing the Malaysian airliner, which would take up the case after the closing of the criminal investigation.

[245] In late June 2015, the Russian government rejected a request by the five countries on the investigative committee to form a UN tribunal which would try those responsible for the shooting down of the aircraft, calling it "not timely and counterproductive.

[251][252] On 19 June 2019, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service charged four people with murder in connection with the shooting down of the aircraft: three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov, and one Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko.

Bellingcat analysed his possible role and said that a video showed Tsemakh making "what appears to be a damning admission to his personal involvement in hiding the Buk missile launcher in the aftermath of its use on 17 July 2014".

It contains a section titled "Russian objectives and activity against UK and allied interests" which quotes MI6 as stating: "Russia conducts information warfare on a massive scale... An early example of this was a hugely intensive, multichannel propaganda effort to persuade the world that Russia bore no responsibility for the shooting down of [Malaysian Airlines flight] MH-17 (an outright falsehood: we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the Russian military supplied and subsequently recovered the missile launcher)".

[291] The Dutch government supported this claim by taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights in July 2020,[278][279] assuming that Moscow had "effective control" of the area of Ukraine where the missile was launched.

[9][312][313] At the end of July, State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev said in an interview for Die Welt that the separatists had shot down the airliner by mistake and that Putin now realised he had supplied the weapon to the "wrong people".

[334] Amid the ongoing war, Fairfax chief correspondent Paul McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty collected a keepsake of sunflower seeds from the wreck site for family and friends of the 38 Australian victims, which happened to be viable and had therefore germinated.

[346][347] On the evening of the crash, the LifeNews portal reported that at around 16:00 local time the separatists shot down "Ukrainian Air Force An-26 transport plane" with a missile, calling it "a new victory for the Donetsk militia".

[360] On 25 December 2014, Russia's state-operated domestic news agency RIA Novosti quoted the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, saying he saw MH17 shot out of the sky by two Ukrainian jets.

[365][366] The claim that the Su-25 could have downed the Boeing 777 with an air-to-air missile was studied and dismissed by the Joint-investigation team (JIT), Public Prosecution Service and numerous independent experts, including chief designer of the Su-25, Vladimir Babak [ru; arz].

Officials also claimed that video evidence presented by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), in which the missile that allegedly shot down the airliner was shown being moved from Russia into Ukraine, was fabricated.