The intelligence indicated that pro-Russian separatists captured a BUK missile system from a Ukrainian military base, then later fired it on MH17, Spiegel reported. Ukraine has accused Russia of being directly responsible for the attack, and its own security service provided recordings of calls that it claimed proved the link. In July, the head of Ukraine's SBU, Vitaly Naida, said it had "clear evidence" of the involvement of Russian citizens in the attack on MH17, which he had provided to international intelligence services. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in his recent "shirtfront" challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said those on board MH17 were "murdered with Russian support". "I am going to be saying to Mr Putin [that] Australians were murdered. They were murdered by Russian-backed rebels using Russian-supplied equipment – we are very unhappy about this," he said.

It was not the first time he has made the claim – in August he said it was "almost indubitable that the weapon used to commit this atrocity was Russian-supplied". Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has also said there was "plenty of evidence to indicate indirect if not direct Russian involvement in the shooting down of this plane". In July, soon after the crash, US Secretary of State John Kerry said "an enormous array of facts ... point at Russia's support for and involvement in this effort". And a BBC investigation for the Panorama program in September found three eyewitnesses who said they had seen a BUK launcher in the area of the crash, operated by soldiers with Russian accents. A recent preliminary report from the official investigation of the crash, led by the Dutch, did not make any claim as to the source of the missile that brought down the plane.