The British investigative journalists group Bellingcat has found a photo of the Buk 323 missile launcher of the Russian 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade taken before the launcher was used to down the MH17 passenger flight in Donetsk region in 2014.

Following a tip from a Twitter user, Bellingcat was able to find the photograph that shows white transport markings on Buk 332 from before the June 2014 convoy, the journalist team said in a report published on their website.

"A photograph taken by a Russian mechanic, likely in the spring of 2013, shows Buk 332 with the same white transport markings that were on the Buk while in Ukraine shortly before and after the downing of MH17. This photograph is the last discovered image of Buk 332, showing its non-obscured unit designation and transport markings, before the June 2014 convoy, when the middle digit of its unit designation was painted over," the report reads.

The mechanic's initially discovered photo album was uploaded in February 2015, but doesn't give the mechanic's name or information about when or where the photographs were taken, Bellingcat said.

"Bellingcat managed to identify the mechanic and located several of his social media profiles. One of these social media profiles shows the Buk 332 photograph, and another social media profile shows two photographs that also are visible in his 2015 album," the report reads.

The investigators concluded the photograph was almost certainly taken in 2013, but there is a remote possibility that it was taken in spring 2014.

According to the Bellingcat report, the ground-to-air Buk missile that downed the Boeing was delivered to Ukraine from Russia. The place of the missile launch was Pervomaiske village, located in an area of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian hybrid forces. Some 100 individuals have been implicated of involvement in the launching of the missile.

As earlier reported, the Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysia Airlines flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) was shot out of the sky killing all 298 passengers on board.

The international joint investigatory group (Joint Investigation Team, JIT), which is comprised of prosecutors and law-enforcement officials from Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Malaysia, as well as EU legal officials, on September 28, 2016 presented its findings in the criminal investigation of the tragedy.

"The JIT concluded that MH17 was downed by a rocket, Series 9M38, launched from a self-propelled ground-to-missile launcher BUK-TELAR, in a farming area in the region of Pervomaiske village. The area is currently held by pro-Russian militant groups. Investigators said missile complex was delivered to Ukraine from the Russian Federation and returned there after the downing," the findings said.

In mid-November 2016, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said that investigators had established the names of a hundred individuals suspected of involvement in the crime and that they will be named in 2017.