CHERVONYI ZHOVTEN, Ukraine — On the afternoon of July 17, 2014, Pyotr Fedotav and his mother, were working in their garden in the tiny hamlet of Chervonyi Zhovten, a few miles south of Snizhne, in eastern Ukraine.

Suddenly, they heard a powerful blast and the earth shook beneath their feet, making them both fall over.

"It was such a huge explosion," the 58-year-old said recently. "It felt like the end of the world!"

The blast was the sound of a missile launcher, firing its weapon into the sky, he said.

"It was a big missile and it wobbled as it flew right over our house in the direction of Torez," he added, pointing in a northwesterly direction.

He said he watched as the missile struck a plane and fiery debris fell to the ground.

Debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 burns at the main crash site in Hrabove, Ukraine, July 17, 2014. Image: Pierre Crom, Getty Images

Initially he thought pro-Russian rebels had shot down another Ukrainian military plane. In the preceding weeks, they had shot down several Ukrainian cargo planes.

Only later did he realize — along with the rest of the world — that the missile hadn't hit a military target but a Boeing 777 passenger jet, killing the 298 people en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Rescue workers tag and bag the bodies of passengers aboard MH17 on July 19, two days after it was downed over the war zone in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.

The question of who is responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 has become a matter of controversy between Russia and the west.

Moscow have put the blame on Ukraine, saying it was a government fighter jet or missile that struck down the plane.

Western officials, meanwhile, say it was Russian soldiers or pro-Russian rebels who shot down the airliner, using a Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft missile system.

Fedotav said he knows who did it.

"The militia were everywhere here, they controlled this area, and they were in that field," he said, with reference to the pro-Russian rebels.

Which field, I asked, for clarification.

"On the road between the village [Chervonyi Zhovten] and the main road," he said. "If you turn from the main road, it's 150 meters."

The possible launch site described by Pyotr Fedotav and the place from where the missile contrail emanated, in blue, near Chervonyi Zhovten village south of Snizhne.

A closer look at the site, marked with a blue dot, which point toward the crash site north of Torez.

Fedotav gave a similar account to Reuters in March. The news agency also spoke with other local residents who corroborated Fedotav's story.

Later, a reporter from Russian state-sponsored channel RT returned to the village to interview Fedotav. At that point, though, he told RT that Reuters had lied about him saying off camera that he'd seen the missile launch.

A few months later, however, he repeated to me, and the French photographer and Ukrainian journalist who were with me, what he'd told Reuters initially — that he saw the missile fly overhead, moments after it was launched, and that the came from a position held by the Russian-backed rebels.

Why, I asked, did he tell RT that Reuters had lied?

Fear, he said. He was afraid that what he'd said could endanger him and his family, he explained. To be clear, I asked him again: How do you know the rocket was launched in this field, and that the militia shot down the plane?

"I was here and it was impossible to not see and hear it," Fedotav said.

Fedotav doesn't hide the fact that he supports the pro-Russian rebels but that only strengthens the believability of his account, which places the blame for the tragedy squarely on them.

Fedotav's statement, as well as those of others obtained by Reuters, also fit with a phone call on the day after MH17 was downed. The phone call was intercepted by the Ukrainian intelligence services and later made public. On the recording, two pro-Russian rebels discuss the Buk anti-aircraft system being transported to a location near Pervomaiskyi.

The field described by Fedotav is less than 2 miles directly west of Pervomaiskyi.

Scorched earth

Nearly a year before I meet Fedotav, I drove out to Pervomaiskyi with a journalist from The Telegraph on July 22, 2014. I had stumbled across a blog post that used geolocation to narrow down the area where the missile's vapor trail had been spotted. The area put the launch site south of Snizhne — a theory supported by U.S. intelligence.

There was rebel activity all around, and a fierce fight was underway at nearby Savur Mohyla. We were stopped on a dirt road by three gunmen driving from the direction of the Russian border. They asked what we were doing and checked our documents. Pretending we had gotten lost trying to find the MH17 crash site, they let us go on our way.

We met a farmer named Vasily who pointed us to an unusual oval-shaped scorch mark in his field — the same field Fedotav described to me almost a year later.

"The field down the way burnt the other day. I don't know why. You might have a look there," Vasily said, gesturing to the area, which is tucked behind a tree line to the north and east, obscuring it from view from Snizhne and the adjacent roadway. He could not recall whether he noticed the burn mark on July 17 or July 18 of last year.

A patch of scorched earth in a field near the village of Chervonyi Zhovten marks the spot where many believe the Buk missile that downed MH17 was fired, July 22, 2014.

Blackened wheat and scalded soil marked the spot where the heat was the most intense. Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian military and special forces, said that, judging by a photo of the area, the back-blast from a Buk missile launch might scorch the ground in similar way.

However, he said, it's impossible to conclude from looking at the photo whether the burn was caused by a Buk missile or another, similar weapon. (Other multiple-launch missile systems have been used in the Ukraine conflict.)

Near the burned area were varying track marks, discarded water and beer bottles, cigarette packs with labels in Russian as well as melted fragments of plastic with a particular logo.

Several sets of varying vehicle tracks, including this one, were seen in a field near the village of Chervonyi Zhovten where many believe the Buk missile that downed MH17 was fired, July 22, 2014.

Military experts I spoke with were unable to identify the tracks. But the open-source investigative team Bellingcat believe the logo is that of Stelko Plastik, a Ukrainian plastics manufacturer that produce weapon containers.

In late June, 2014, three weeks before MH17 was downed, the company reported that Russian-backed rebels had raided its offices, taking with them more than half a million hryvnia (about $25,000) worth of equipment. Some could have ended up in this field.

Discarded plastic parts that indicate the presence of a weapons container produced by a Ukrainian manufacturer found at the possible Buk missile launch site near Chervonyi Zhovten village, July 22, 2015.

Just a couple hundred meters from the scorched earth was a rebel position, concealed by trees and shrubs. As we drove away from the site, we spotted the rebel flag of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. A dozen gunmen checked our documents and questioned us. They were surprised to see us there, asking how we made it through Snizhne without being turned around.

Bellingcat, which has also analyzed the image of the vapor trail, as well as other images and videos published online, has found the field location near Chervonyi Zhovten to be the most likely place for the Buk missile to have been fired.

Eliot Higgins, the analyst in charge of Bellingcat, looked at dashboard camera footage and satellite images showing the Buk launcher moving from Donetsk to Snizhne on July 17.

"Based on various witness statements, images of the Buk missile launcher, work by journalists in the field, images of the smoke trail, and other information we strongly believe this is the likely launch site of the missile that shot down MH17," Higgins said.

On July 18, the day after MH17 was shot down, a video emerged of a Buk system on a flat-bed trailer being transported away from Snizhe and through the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, en route to the Russian border and not to be seen again.

The plethora of evidence pointing to the field as the location of the missile launch led the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to take soil samples on June 19. (The OSCE declined to comment on whether its search of the site had turned up any conclusive evidence.)

The report from the international investigation is due out later this year.

The same field near the village of Chervonyi Zhovten almost one year later, on July 4, 2015.

Should the field turn out to be the location where the missile was fired, one major question remains unanswered: Who gave the command to fire?