Australia still hopes its investigators will be able to scour the MH17 crash site one last time, even though the search has been called off because of worsening fighting in the region.
About 20 Australians involved in the investigation remain in Ukraine, but that number will drop to 12 by the end of the week.
Australia's special envoy Angus Houston is among those preparing to leave.
But he wants to return to conduct a final inspection of the site to ensure no identifiable human remains have gone undetected.
"I think it's absolutely vital that we go back when the environment becomes more permissive," he told ABC radio on Thursday.
He said the decision to pull back investigators was absolutely warranted given the threat posed by Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces fighting nearby.
Investigators had found no human remains in the three days before the search was called off.
Mr Houston said the expert advice he'd received was that no significant human remains were left at the crash site.
He couldn't confirm earlier reports that 80 bodies remained until the disaster victim identification process had been completed in the Netherlands.
"It's painstaking work and we won't know exactly how many people are identified until the end of the process," he said.
All 298 people on board MH17 - including 38 Australian citizens and residents - were killed when the plane was downed by a missile over eastern Ukraine.
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