The Hague: Dutch-led air crash investigators on Tuesday will release their final report into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over war-torn Ukraine, in a move likely to worsen already-strained ties between Russia and the West.
As Dutch Safety Board officials prepared to unveil the highly anticipated findings of a 15-month inquiry, Moscow was gearing up to go on the counter-offensive after vehemently denying any role in the air disaster.
The report, due to be released at 1115 GMT at the Gilze-Rijen air force base in southern Netherlands, is expected to say how the Boeing 777 was blown from the sky on July 17, 2014, but not who was responsible.
All 298 people on board, most of them Dutch and among them 15 crew members, were killed when the routine flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was brought down - possibly by a missile - over eastern Ukraine.
The disaster happened during heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, and Kiev and the West have squarely blamed the rebels.
Analyst Peter Felstead of Jane's Defence Weekly told AFP the airliner was most likely shot down "by mistake" by a BUK missile crew, who crossed the border to help the rebels counter Ukrainian air threats.
"We are expecting the report to confirm what we have assumed in that this was a Russian mistake," Felstead told AFP.
