Russia Says Some Troops Pulling Back From Ukraine Border as NATO Hopes for Diplomacy
Mixed military signals from Moscow come as Germany’s chancellor holds talks with Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said negotiations are still possible in the standoff over Ukraine and his Defense Ministry said it was pulling back some troops from near the border, but Western leaders were uncertain what to make of the Kremlin’s mixed messaging because other Russian military activities continue unabated.
The announced troop pullback would scale down a total force that is still estimated to number more than 120,000, and came amid a new round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at defusing the crisis. Moscow has warned of unspecified consequences if the U.S. and its allies reject its security demands.
“We are also ready to follow the negotiation track,” Mr. Putin said at a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow. “But all issues must be considered as a whole,” he said, adding that the U.S. and its allies had ignored Russian security concerns.
Mr. Scholz nodded to Mr. Putin’s concern without offering concessions. “For us Germans and for all Europeans it is clear that sustainable security can only be achieved with Russia and not against Russia,” he said.
U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Julianne Smith said a Russian pullback wasn’t yet evident. “What’s important is that we verify,” she said. “This is something that we’ll have to look at closely and verify in the days ahead.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Scholz arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the situation, a day after Mr. Scholz visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. The Kremlin said the talks were expected to last for hours.
Ukrainian officials voiced skepticism that Russia’s position was softening and it was unclear what signals Moscow was intending to send with its statement on troop deployments and other recent moves.
On Monday, during a made-for-television discussion between Mr. Putin and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Mr. Lavrov said the West had shown itself completely unwilling to accommodate Russian interests, but ended by indicating diplomacy should continue and that “our possibilities are far from exhausted.”
Then, on Tuesday, Russia’s parliament voted to ask Mr. Putin to recognize two Russian-backed separatist republics in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas as independent states. Such a step could set the stage for Russia to openly move its armed forces into those areas but could also give Mr. Putin cover to reduce his forces around Ukraine.
“In our country, the vast majority of people sympathize with the residents of Donbas,” Mr. Putin said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he saw “mixed signals” coming from the Kremlin. “Clearly there are signs for a diplomatic opening…we are seeing Russian openness to conversation,” he said.
However, Mr. Johnson said the intelligence coming from the Ukrainian border was “not encouraging,” with more troops gathering there and field hospitals being built. “We think there is an avenue for more diplomacy. We have seen some positive signs,” he said. “If that is correct let’s build on that.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also noted potentially hopeful signs of a diplomatic opening from Moscow. “But so far we have not seen any sign of de-escalation on the ground,” he said.
President Biden plans to deliver remarks at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Tuesday to provide an update on the situation in Ukraine.
The White House said Mr. Biden would reiterate the U.S. remains open to diplomacy in coordination with allies that would build on “the multiple diplomatic off-ramps we and our Allies and partners have offered Russia in recent months.”
U.S. officials have said Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine as soon as Wednesday. Russia has said it has no intention of invading Ukraine. Western officials and intelligence analysts say the crisis could continue for an extended period even if Russia doesn’t stage an outright attack.
Oleksii Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, played down the importance of Russia’s troop-withdrawal announcement, saying the soldiers could be quickly returned to Ukraine’s borders.
“We have to await confirmation from our intelligence community that this is in fact occurring,” Mr. Danilov said. “The turning point will be when the Russian Federation realizes that we are a separate state, that we have the full right to be one, and stops trying to liquidate us.”
U.S. officials on Monday said the Russian military presence near Ukraine had grown to 105 battalion tactical groups, from 83 groups earlier this month. Russia has also moved around 500 combat aircraft within range of Ukraine and has 40 combat ships in the Black Sea, according to U.S. officials.
Tuesday’s announcement prompted a rally in U.S. stock futures and European indexes following days of losses. Oil prices, which had been driven higher by the prospect of disruption to Russian exports in the event of an invasion, fell sharply.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized repeated Western warnings of a Russian attack on Ukraine, slamming what it has consistently described as a U.S.-led disinformation effort aimed at vilifying Russia.
“February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western propaganda for war failed,” Maria Zakharova, the ministry’s spokeswoman, wrote on Facebook. “Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot being fired.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Tuesday that any move by Russia to recognize the Moscow-backed separatist statelets in Ukraine’s east would signify the Kremlin’s withdrawal from international agreements that Kyiv signed with Moscow over the regions.
“Such a move will cause a serious blow to the politico-diplomatic settlement that Ukraine and its partners have been actively engaged to promote,” he said in a statement on his ministry’s website.
Recognition by Moscow of the two separatist republics as independent would effectively end diplomatic efforts that began in 2015 when an agreement known as Minsk-2 stopped most hostilities in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics were carved out following an armed insurgency that began in 2014 and haven’t been recognized by any country.
Russia has recently been increasing pressure on Kyiv to abide by the terms of that agreement, which Ukraine had agreed to under military pressure. The Minsk-2 accord called for the decentralization of political power in Ukraine and constitutional changes that, under an interpretation favored by Moscow, could give Russia veto power over Ukraine’s major policies.
The impact of Russia’s potential recognition of the two breakaway regions isn’t immediately evident. If Mr. Putin grants the lawmakers’ request, he may be able to declare he is standing up for Russian interests and has made the West listen to Moscow’s security demands with his military buildup. At the same time, recognition of the republics could give him the chance to send weapons and troops onto their territories following scripted appeals for his help, and potentially give him a pretext to attack Ukraine in the name of defending Russia’s allies while continuing to weaken Kyiv using economic and other tools.
Russia has long accused Ukraine of discriminating against Russian speakers in Donbas.
Several Russian deputies said the vote could give Mr. Putin more leverage in his negotiations over obtaining security guarantees for Russia and could help resolve the crisis in the Kremlin’s favor.
Mr. Danilov, the Ukrainian national-security official, said recognition of the Russian-controlled statelets in Donetsk and Luhansk wouldn’t change much on the ground because the areas are already controlled by Moscow, which has distributed Russian passports to their residents. He said Kyiv has no intention of seizing the region by force because that would result in civilian casualties.