REUTERS

The Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) research group has said the Bellingcat team and other investigators identified another suspect in the MH17 crash over Donbas.

"The Bellingcat team, The Insider and other investigators have found out that 'Andrey Ivanovich' aka 'Orion,' who was involved in the delivery of the Buk missile system to Ukraine, which shot down Malaysia's MH17, is a GRU officer, Oleg Vladimirovich Ivannikov. Earlier he served as Defense Minister of South Ossetia," CIT wrote on Twitter.

UNIAN memo. All 298 people on board flight MH17 were killed when it was struck by a missile on July 17, 2014, and crashed into fields in the part of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia's proxy forces. Two-thirds of the passengers on the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch.

The Joint Investigation Team's preliminary report concluded that the plane was shot down by a BUK missile "controlled by pro-Russian fighters". It was also established that the Buk launcher had been brought from Russia and then hastily taken back.

The JIT conclusions have been disputed by Russia claiming that it was the Ukrainian forces who were responsible for the plane's downing.

Prosecutors investigating the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 said on Thursday they had identified the missile used to shoot down the plane as coming from Russia's armed forces.