Australia's special envoy Angus Houston says he's confident most of the remains of MH17 victims have been recovered, as his team prepares to leave Ukraine.
Most of the Australian experts will leave Kiev by next week, after the Dutch-led recovery team withdrew from the crash site amid escalating fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.
Retired Air Chief Marshal Houston said the security situation had made it an impossibility to search the remaining areas but the plan was to return to do a final check when things settled down.
It had been three days since remains had been found at the site, a good sign that most had been recovered, he said.
"I'm greatly encouraged by the fact that we searched high priority areas on the last three days of the search and didn't find any human remains at all," he told AAP from Kiev.
"We did find a lot of personal possessions which have been recovered and will eventually be returned."
The search of the site by local authorities prior to their arrival was also much more thorough than first thought, with 1000 people trawling the area, he said.
News of the withdrawal from the site came just prior to a national memorial service for the 38 Australian victims killed when the Malaysia Airlines jet was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine nearly three weeks ago.
"Really the business of searching for the remains had become an impossibility in that environment," he said.
A small amount of Australian experts will remain in Ukraine and the Netherlands to work on the investigation into the crash and continue identifying bodies.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said recovery teams had located large parts of the wreckage while on the site, and although security prevented their removal, substantial evidence had been collected.
"There's a lot of good evidential material has been gathered," he said.
Because the circumstances of the crash were widely known, the investigation wasn't focused on piecing together what happened as much as other airline accidents.
"I think there's no argument that the aircraft just fell out of the sky," he said.
"The aircraft was shot down, there's no doubt about that."
Photographic evidence, as well as interviews, would be used in the investigation to determine how MH17 was shot out of the sky, and who was responsible.
But Air Chief Marshal Houston was adamant the search task is not over, saying Australians will revisit the site for an "absolutely" necessary final check and plans are in place for that already.
"We've made that very clear to the Ukraine government," he said.
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