While reports circulated of the missile launcher being in the town of Snezhnoye hours before the Boeing 777 was downed, two eyewitnesses are the first to claim the crew operating the unit appeared to be from the Russian military, according to the BBC program Panorama.

The soldiers operating the missile launcher were "well-disciplined, unlike the rebels, and not wearing the standard Ukrainian camouflage uniform sported by government and rebel troops alike", one eyewitness said.

"They had pure Russian accents. They say the letter 'g' differently to us," the civilian told the BBC, which noted that most eastern Ukrainians speak Russian.

An accompanying officer spoke with a Muscovite accent, another eyewitness said.

The Associated Press had earlier reported eyewitnesses saying they had seen what looked like a Buk missile launcher in Snezhnoye on July 17, the day the plane was shot down. The BBC report, however, draws a closer link to Russian troops.

Pro-Russia separatists have denied they had possession of a missile launcher, while Moscow has laid the blame for the crash that killed 298, including 38 people from Australia, on Ukraine where the fighting is going on.

Hours after the incident, however, a recording surfaced in which a soldier  at the crash scene described the incident to a commander, who denounced the dead as a plane of "spies."

Sources aligned with the Kremlin have suggested the civilian plane was brought down by a Ukrainian jet fighter, although the type of fighter in question is unable to travel at the altitude the doomed Malaysian airliner was at when it was hit.

The MH17 crash has dragged Australia into a geopolitical drama that marks the biggest crisis between Russia and the West since the fall of communism in the early 1990s.

Overnight, the European Union has announced the latest round of sanctions on Russia, aimed at punishing Moscow's leadership for its role in the fighting in Eastern Europe. Australia imposed further sanctions weeks ago.

Although Russia denied direct operations in eastern Ukraine, there is a growing body of evidence of Moscow's involvement, including, among other things, posts on social media and questions about Russian soldiers' deaths being asked by their families.

While Russia claims a Western-backed coup ousting democratically elected Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych raised fears for the safety of ethnic Russians within Ukraine's border, the fighting comes months after Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine with the help of masked gunmen.

NATO recently agreed to funding and training for Ukraine's military, as well as the creation of a rapid-reaction force for use in Eastern Europe.

Although eastern Ukraine has deep ties to Russia, the Russian government in 1994 made undertakings through the so-called Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Russia has threatened to "react" to further sanctions from the West, with some analysts speculating Moscow intends to close Russian airspace for Western civilian air carriers. In addition to breaking the Budapest Memorandum, the US says Russia has broken a key 1987 missile test ban.

In 2008, Russia's military threatened an attack on Poland after the country agreed to host a US anti-missile shield, which the US said was intended to defend Europe against Iranian missiles.

In arms control, missile defence is seen as potentially destabilising because it upsets the balance of deterrence between nuclear-armed nations.

Fairfax Media