KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 14 — Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda has released an audio clip alleged to be leaked conversation between two US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents conspiring to bring down Malaysian Airlines (MAS) flight MH17.

In an online column, US-based magazine Foreign Policy (FP) however mocked the audio as Russia’s “comically bad” attempt at propaganda, claiming that the two men in the recording sounded like they were reading from a script and were trying to hide their Russian accent.

“The men do not talk with each other like native English speakers and use turns of phrase that sound as if their dialogue was translated to English from Russian via Google Translate,” FP said Wednesday.

The audio clip was allegedly of telephone conversations between two CIA agents labelled as David Hamilton and David L. Stern, discussing their preparations to stage a crash in order to place the blame on Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists and the Kremlin.

The plans had included shooting the jetliner down with surface-to-air missiles, and a “Plan B” of putting a bomb inside the plane.

FP claimed that Russia has latched on a new conspiracy theory that a bomb was placed inside MH17, and it was inadvertently reinforced by the alleged leaked audio.

Independent investigative group Bellingcat however insisted that the most likely situation is MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile fired by the separatists, as it has the highest degree of evidence.

“It really doesn’t make any sense,” Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins told FP, referring to the bomb conspiracy theory.

In June, Bellingcat had claimed that Russia’s defence ministry tampered with two satellite images in order to blame Ukraine for the downed MH17.

According to Bellingcat, Russia had used the Adobe Photoshop CS5 software to digitally alter the images, including to show that Ukraine’s “Buk” M-1 missile launcher were purportedly in the range of the crash.

Just earlier this week, investigators probing the shooting said they had identified pieces that "possibly" come from a Russian-made Buk missile from eastern Ukraine where the plane crashed.

MH17, a Boeing 777-200ER, was on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 passengers and crew, when it was shot down over strife-torn Ukraine on July 17. There were no survivors.