KIEV, Ukraine — Faked. Forged. Doctored. Photoshopped.

That's what new analysis of publicly available satellite images, published Sunday by a team of independent digital sleuths, reveal Russia's Ministry of Defense did with satellite imagery presented in its official report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. They say it was Russia's attempt to blame Ukraine for the crime.

The ill-fated Boeing 777 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board the passenger airliner were killed. Debris from the plane and passengers' bodies crashed and burned in a rural area near the town of Torez, deep inside territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

See also: MH17 investigators say Buk rocket strike is primary theory in downing

People walk among the debris at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. Image: Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press

Kiev and Western governments say all evidence points to a unit of Russian servicemen operating a Russian SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which has been tracked across the separatist enclave and across the border into Russia, from where it came. The international team investigating MH17 said this is its leading theory.

But Russia has its own. Officials from the country's Defense Ministry and Air Force Lieutenant-General Igor Makushev presented findings in Moscow on July 21, 2014, four days after the downing of MH17, at a televised briefing in which they used radar images flashed on big screens in a high-tech conference room to prove their point — that either a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet had fired on the airliner despite Kiev's assertions that no aircraft were nearby, or that one of Ukraine's own Buk missile systems fired on it.

But that report appears to have been a sham, according to detailed forensic analysis conducted by Eliot Higgins, a visiting research associate at King's College London's war studies department, and his team of digital investigators at Bellingcat, the organization behind the new report.

After determining the source of the photos — in this case Russia's Defense Ministry — Bellingcat analyzed their metadata, and checked them against publicly available satellite imagery of the same location from dates before and after July 17.

Higgins told Mashable that he's "100% confident" Bellingcat's analysis proves Russia's Defense Ministry presented "faked" satellite imagery from June 2014 as being from the days leading up to the downing of MH17 in July 2014.

Moreover, further forensic analysis showed the ministry doctored the images to add elements that would obscure details, which could disprove its authenticity and lend credence to its claim that Kiev was behind the attack.

The Defense Ministry and other government representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Debunking the Russian report

To debunk the Russian report, the Bellingcat team examined two of six satellite photos presented as evidence during last year's July 21 presentation, as well as a high-quality version of one image published days later, on Aug. 1.

The first image, which the ministry titled "Picture 4," purports to show Ukrainian military unit A-1428, one of the three Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile battalions in the separatist stronghold of Avdiivka, a government-controlled town north of the eastern city of Donetsk. The photo is time-stamped July 17, 2014 at 11:32 a.m., just hours before MH17 was downed. It shows two patches of clouds; one to the upper left, and another in the lower right.

First, it has been edited using Adobe Photoshop CS5, as easily proven by the image's metadata. Some of that was simply to add labels. But Bellingcat then went further, showing how the thick white cloud in the left has been doctored, and the satellite photo itself matched perfectly not with other photos from July, but with those from a month earlier, in June.

Higgins found distinct markers in satellite images from June, such as track marks, vegetation and cleared trees to prove his point that the ministry's image was taken from one a month ahead of the crash.

Bellingcat also discovered something else about Picture 4: A military vehicle (marked with "A" below) appears to be leaking some sort of fluid (marked "B" below), which Higgins' team presumes is oil.

After comparing it with successive satellite images (see below) from April 28, 2014 to June 19, 2014, it becomes clear the leaking fluid gradually pooled a month before the Defense Ministry's Picture 4 was published.

Bellingcat summarized its analysis of Picture 4:

The Bellingcat investigation team's forensic analysis revealed that Picture 4 was digitally modified with Adobe Photoshop CS5 software. It is highly probable that clouds were digitally added on the left and right sides of the image, which obscured details that could have been used for additional comparisons with historical imagery. The comparison of the contents of Picture 4 with historical satellite imagery from Google Earth conclusively demonstrates that Picture 4 was taken between 1 June 2014 and 18 June 2014.

Another image presented as evidence by Russia, called "Picture 5," shows an area south of Zaroschinskoe village in eastern Ukraine. It is dated July 17, 2014 at 11:32 a.m.

Clever and detailed analysis by Bellingcat shows it, too, has been photoshopped and altered, highlighting five areas with significantly different levels of modification, including places where the earth around military vehicles does not match the rest of the image.

A series of more satellite images hammer home the point. A simple reverse-image search found that the satellite photograph shared by the Defense Ministry was first published on a blog called kavkazpress.ru in a higher resolution and different compression, with a time stamp preceding that of the ministry's by minutes.

Bellingcat summarizes its analysis of Picture 5:

The Bellingcat investigation team’s forensic analysis revealed that Picture 5 has been digitally modified with Adobe Photoshop CS5 software. We assess with a high degree of probability that a number of areas of the original satellite image were digitally altered. The comparison of Picture 5 with historical satellite pictures from Google Earth conclusively demonstrates that Picture 5 was taken prior to 15 July 2014.

In a nutshell, Russia's evidence doesn't add up.

"Considering that satallite imagery represents the majority of evidence produced by the Russian government, that's extremely disturbing," Higgins told Mashable. "[The Russians] not only lied to the public and global community, but also the families of the 298 MH17 victims, only days after the disaster."

"And this means the July 21 Russian Ministry of Defense press conference consisted of deception and fabrications."

The full Bellingcat report can be viewed here

The investigation comes on the heels of a highly touted report Higgins co-authored with Washington-based Atlantic Council in which researchers used open source information from Google's Street View, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and VK.com, as well as satellite imagery, to prove Russia carried out military operations inside Ukraine.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied direct involvement in the conflict still raging in eastern Ukraine, despite mounting evidence, including documented deaths of its soldiers fighting inside the country, to the contrary.