Russia's air-defense systems manufacturer, Almaz-Antey, is suing the European Union (EU) for unjustified sanctions against them, news portal Russia Today reports.

They claimed that the sanctions are motivated by EU's alleged complicity in the tragedy of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight shot down over east Ukraine.

"The purpose of today's conference is to prove our non-involvement in the MH17 tragedy," Almaz-Antey CEO Yan Novikov told a press conference on its appeal at the European Court of Justice.

The company's adviser to the head engineer, Mikhail Malyshevsky, said the damage to MH17 allows them to identify the most likely type of missile.

According to Malyshevsky, the BUK 9M317 missile type employed by the Russian Armed Forces is out of the question here, as the shape of the fragments does not match the damage caused to the aircraft.

"The character of the damage caused to the aircraft is consistent only with the BUK 9M38 and BUK 9M38M1 missiles. Traces of BUK 9M38M1 missile fragments found on remains of MH17 Boeing.

"The damage caused to the aircraft appears consistent with the 9M38M1 missile, which has a specific scalpel trajectory, with 40 percent of shrapnel breaking apart in a perpendicular fashion to the initial trajectory of the missile," he said.

Almaz-Antey also has evidence that the BUK-M1 air defense missile system and accompanying missiles were still being deployed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2005. According to their evidence, they had a total of 991 9M38M1 missiles at the time.

"The missile that likely struck the Boeing aircraft, 9M38M1, has not been produced in the Russian Federation since 1999," said Malyshevsky.

He added, the missile could not have been fired from Snezhny, as the survey findings are consistent with it being fired from the Zaroschshenskoe village. If it were fired from Snezhny, 'the entire front end of the cabin would have been blown off'.

Novikov said: "If necessary, we can carry out a field test with the participation of independent experts."

However, the country that possessed the missile that hit flight MH17 remains unknown. Nevertheless, Almaz-Antey is still entertaining the possibility that another aircraft might have been involved in the downing of flight MH17.

The missile-maker emphasised that they only do technical analysis but refused to speculate on whether Kiev or other parties are to blame.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian General Staff said Ukraine possesses BUK M-1 missile systems, but on the day of the MH17 crash, Ukraine was not in control of the area where the missile was suspected to be fired from.