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| Prosecutors said the missile was brought into Ukraine from Russia (AFP) |
International prosecutors say Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was brought down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 by a Buk missile that had originated from Russia.
They likewise limited down the region it was fired from to a field in domain controlled by Russian-supported rebels.
Each of the 298 individuals on board the Boeing 777 died when it separated up mid-air flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Russia says it can't acknowledge the discoveries as the last truth, saying no Russian weapons were taken to Ukraine.
"Based on the criminal investigation, we have concluded that flight MH17 was downed by a Buk missile of the series 9M83 that came from the territory of the Russian Federation," chief Dutch police investigator Wilbert Paulissen told a news meeting on Thursday.
The missile had been taken from Russia to rebel held Ukraine in the morning of 17 July, when the plane was shot down, and the launcher was reclaimed to Russia a short time later, he said.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has additionally contracted the missile dispatch site down to a particular field close to the town of Pervomaiskyi, which was then in rebel hands.
In a meeting with the BBC, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was "nothing to accept or deny", as he understood these were preliminary findings.
"We cannot accept as final truth of what they say. I bet you haven't seen any proof of what they say," he told the Hardtalk programme, adding: "We know the devil is in the detail, and we are still missing lot of the detail."
But he appeared to rule out that the missile came from Russia: "We've been ruling out the fact that any Russian weapons were shipped to Ukraine, any Russian army members, any Russian troops were inside Ukraine. And we're still ruling out that possibility."
Ukraine hailed the discoveries, saying it demonstrated Russia's "direct involvement" in the bringing down of the plane.
"This puts an end to all of Russia's attempts to discredit the activities and conclusions of the Joint Investigation Team by spreading distorted or fabricated information," the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in an announcement.
Who gave the order?
But the relatives of the individuals who died want to know who can be held responsible.
"Apart from wanting to know exactly what weapon was used and where it was fired from, we also want an answer as to where we go from here," said Evert van Zijtveld, who lost his 18-year-old child Robert-Jan and little girl Frederique, 19, in the disaster.
"We want to see the perpetrators caught and put on trial," he told the AFP news agency.
JIT prosecutors have built up the characters of around 100 individuals "linked to the crash or the transport of the Buk" missile, yet they are yet to figure out who could be considered criminally responsible.
They say they should set up who gave the request to move the missile launcher into eastern Ukraine, and where the request for it to be fired originated from.
Numerous witnesses
Prosecutors played recordings from intercepted telephone calls amid their news conference.
They said witnesses reported seeing the missile launcher move from Russia into Ukraine and exhibited pictures and recordings.
The dispatch site was pinpointed by "numerous witnesses", prosecutors said.
Separatist rebels have denied they were involved.
"We never had such air defence systems, nor the people who could operate them," Eduard Basurin, military deputy operational commander at the rebel Donetsk People's Republic, told the Interfax news agency.
"Therefore we could not have shot down the Boeing [flight MH17]."
An inquiry by the Dutch Safety Board last year found that a Russian-made Buk missile hit the plane but was not specific about where the launch site could have been.
Earlier this week, Russia said it had radar data showing that the missile was not fired from rebel-held territory.
The JIT does not yet have access to that data, prosecutors said.
