Dutch prosecutors said on Sunday they would "seriously study" claims by citizen journalists to have identified Russian soldiers implicated in the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

The claims are made by a British-based group of "citizen investigative journalists" called Bellingcat, which specializes in trawling through data on social media and other open sources.

"We received the report just after Christmas," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch prosecutor's office, said.