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A British investigator says he has almost certain proof Flight MH17 was shot down by a missile from a Russian air base.

In a compelling new documentary, Eliot Higgins tells how he spent months analysing photos and video taken in the days before the Malaysia Airlines jet was downed over Ukraine on July 17 last year.

Some 283 passengers and 15 crew died on the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight when it passed over eastern Ukraine, much of which had been occupied by pro-Russian rebels.

Dutch experts are still examining the evidence in a painstakingly slow investigation and haven't yet produced a final report.

But Mr Higgins believes he could be ahead of them after he and his team painstakingly 'geo-tagged' reams of footage by matching the backgrounds in the images to real places on Google Maps.

He then used the tags to trace the path of a BUK surface-to-air missile - from Russia's 53rd Air Defence Brigade base in Kursk to the crash site on Ukrainian soil.

After the crash it was apparently filmed driving back - with one missile missing.

The Leicester-based blogger's claims were first made last year, but have been revived this week after he published a far more detailed report on the missile's alleged final movements.

He showed his techniques to Australia's 60 Minutes, declaring: "I'm absolutely positive it came from Russia."

(Image: Getty)

Self-taught 'citizen journalist' Mr Higgins rose to fame when he analysed hundreds of YouTube videos from Syria in his front room and concluded the Assad regime was using barrel bombs.

His sometimes controversial analysis - which looks at the designs and serial numbers of weapons - led to follow-up stories around the world and he is now a visiting research associate at King's College London.

He told 60 Minutes his team used software previously only available to soldiers and spies to uncover not just YouTube videos, but social media images posted by Russia's own soldiers.

Then the task fell to him and colleagues on Bellingcat, the investigative citizen journalism website he founded.

"There’s an old expression that ‘loose lips sink ships’ and that’s the case here where one innocent comment leads to another innocent comment," he said.

(Image: Getty)

"They don’t think this amounts to much but when you have a lot of innocent comments you can join them together a build a bigger picture."

In one case he added: "We saw a phone number on the side of the Volvo truck to identify the yard where it came from.

"We then used route finding software to work out the quickest route from the yard to the location in the photo using Google maps and images.

"We could then compare elements in the photo to elements in the photo of the missile launch being transported to separatists a few hours before MH17 was shot down. The power lines and even the tree branches in the photos matched."

Russia has condemned all the photos as fakes, according to 60 Minutes.

(Image: AFP)

And the country has always furiously denied arming the pro-Russian rebels or having anything to do with the shooting down of the plane.

But Mr Higgins is adamant - and believes the missile launcher wasn't just handed over to rebels who fired it themselves.

"It’s very likely it was operated by Russian soldiers," he said. "It very unlikely it was driven into rebel territory, the keys handed over, and the rebels told ‘there you go just press that button the launch a missile’.

"That just doesn’t make sense."