WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – But the images do not prove, however, that the system fired, the company said in a report on Friday.
"The imagery shows the air defense system, mounted atop a transloader, being transported east through the Donetsk town of Makiivka," the report stated. "The new imagery obtained by Stratfor does not prove that this particular Buk system fired a missile at the airliner."
The intelligence firm, which obtained the imagery through its partner AllSource Analysis, said the satellite pictures were taken about five hours before the Malaysian airliner was shot down.
Stratfor argued that the imagery "further substantiates the narrative being pieced together by the collective analysis of open-source information," which argues that the plane was shot from a location near the town of Snizhne in the vicinity of Donetsk.
A Malaysia Airlines plane crashed on July 17, 2014, in eastern Ukraine after being shot down en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. All 298 people on board were killed. Ukraine and pro-independence militia in the country's southeast have blamed each other for the downing of the MH17 flight.
The Russian arms manufacturer that builds Buk missile systems, Almaz-Antey, conducted its own probe into the crash confirming that it was the surface-to-air missile that hit the jet and adding that it could only have been launched in the region of Zaroshchenske that was allegedly controlled by the Ukrainian forces at the time of the crash.
