No victims’ remains were found at the MH17 crash site in the three days before Australian investigators pulled out of the area, Australia’s special envoy has said, as Russia accused Australia of having “oversized ambitions” and losing sight of the Ukraine situation.



The humanitarian mission has been in eastern Ukraine investigating the crash site of MH17, shot down on 17 July. All 298 passengers, including 38 Australians, were killed. The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has repeatedly suggested the pro-Russian militants appear to be supported by the Kremlin and has called on Russia to pull back troops from the Ukrainian border.

On Wednesday night, the Russian foreign ministry accused the Australian government of making absurd and irresponsible statements.

Russia said comments from Australian leaders apportioning blame to Russia for supporting the separatists showed the government had “completely lost an adequate picture of the developments in Ukraine and around it”, the Russian news agency ITAr-Tass said.

A Russian convoy of about 300 vehicles, allegedly carrying humanitarian aid, was on its way to eastern Ukraine but without any international agreement on where it was going or what it was carrying, sparking fears that it was a precursor to an invasion.

“They keep making absurd statements that the humanitarian convoy to help civilians in the south-east of Ukraine can be used as a pretext for Russia’s ‘armed invasion’ of the neighbouring country,” the ministry said.

“Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop has gone farther than others in making irresponsible innuendoes against our country even though one would think that her position presupposes building bridges between countries, not destroying them.”

The recovery operation for the remains of MH17 victims was officially suspended this week due to increased fighting in the area between the pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces which blocked access to the crash site. However, Australia’s special envoy, Angus Houston, flagged a return when fighting de-escalates.

Houston told ABC Radio National on Thursday morning that the Australian search team went through most of the priority areas around the crash site in eastern Ukraine and recovered a “small amount” of remains from areas that had not been searched.

However, “in the three days preceding the closure of the team’s work, no human remains were found”, he said from Kiev.

Malaysia says it has secured access to the crash site, but most of the Australian team has either left or is about to leave.

Houston said the initial work by the Ukrainian emergency services was more thorough than the humanitarian mission had anticipated, and it seems most of the remains had been discovered, despite intensified fighting in the area, blocking access to an unsearched area. The increased restrictions on search areas became a case of “diminishing returns”, he said.

“We weren’t able to search the areas we needed to finish the job because that’s where the defensive lines were. Essentially there were no other areas that we needed to search and it was time to call an end to it. I think the decision … was absolutely right in the circumstances,” he said.

“The expert advice I have from one of the world’s renowned experts in this area, is in his view we have recovered most of the remains and he’s very confident that there are no major remains left.”

Houston suggested the team would return to the site once the fighting settled down.

“In terms of what remains to be done I think it’s absolutely vital that we go back when the environment becomes much more permissive,” he said.

“I think that [final inspection] will probably take about two weeks and the whole objective of that will be to make sure we have not left any identifiable remains behind.”

Houston said a small team of about 20 will remain to continue investigations, including a number of federal police who will move between Ukraine and the Netherlands.

He would not be drawn on how many victims he expected would be finally identified – the Dutch government said last week that 65 people had been confirmed – saying the identification process was “painstaking work”.