Russia says some troops withdrawing from Ukraine’s border; NATO chief notes ‘cautious optimism’ but sees no de-escalation yet

“There are signs from Moscow that diplomacy should continue,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels ahead of meetings with NATO defense ministers Wednesday. “There are grounds for cautious optimism. So far, we have not seen any sign of de-escalation on the ground.”

After Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled Monday that he was open to diplomacy to resolve the crisis between Russia and NATO over Ukraine’s bid to join the alliance, Moscow sent a barrage of contradictory signals Tuesday — announcing that some Russian forces were being sent home after completing drills, even as major military exercises continued near Ukraine.

Putin met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Kremlin on Tuesday, the latest in a string of Western leaders urging the Russian president to de-escalate the most serious crisis in Russia’s relations with NATO since the end of the Cold War.

U.S. officials have warned that Putin has the final military pieces in position to launch a major attack within days if he chooses to do so.

“We have not seen any de-escalation on the ground, no signs of reduced Russian military presence on the border with Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said Tuesday. He said NATO is looking for a “significant and enduring” withdrawal of Russian forces, troops and heavy equipment from areas bordering Ukraine as a sign of real de-escalation.

Russia’s military said Tuesday that more than 30 of its naval vessels were carrying out a live fire exercise in the Black Sea with aircraft taking part, in preparation for a “major” naval exercise that would be supervised by Russia’s naval commander.

But it also announced that some units from Russia’s Western Military District and Southern Military District were loading equipment onto rail cars to return to base after completing military exercises, in line with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s report to Putin on Monday that some drills were ending and others would end soon.

U.S. and NATO officials have repeatedly called on Russia to draw down its 130,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, warning that Russia has all the pieces in place for a major attack on Ukraine.

After Putin left the door open Monday to continued dialogue over his demands for an end to NATO expansion, including barring Ukraine from the alliance, State Department spokesman Ned Price called for Russian de-escalation first.

“We have not seen any meaningful, real sign of de-escalation,” he told reporters Monday.

Questions remain about Moscow’s intentions, with Kremlin officials, diplomats and military officials sending contradictory messages and keeping Western leaders off balance in trying to gauge whether Putin will give the order to invade Ukraine and when it might happen.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine would wait to see whether Russia was serious about drawing down its forces before concluding that Russia was moving to de-escalate.

“Russia keeps making statements of various kinds, so we have a rule: We believe it when we see it, not when we hear about it. We will believe de-escalation when we see their withdrawal,” Kuleba told journalists in Kyiv.

After an earlier military buildup on Ukraine’s borders last spring, Russia withdrew its forces but left significant amounts of military equipment in place, according to Ukrainian officials.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Monday, sat down with Putin in the Kremlin on Tuesday, in his first meeting with the Russian leader since taking office in December.

Scholz faces the formidable task of trying to fill the shoes of his predecessor as chancellor, Angela Merkel, who for years maintained close contact with Putin even as NATO-Russian relations plunged following Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Meeting in the Kremlin, Putin and Scholz sat at opposite ends of a long white oval table, where Putin last week met French President Emmanuel Macron. Kremlin officials said this was in line with the administration’s coronavirus restrictions.

Before the talks began, Putin said he would focus on the “fierce debates” over European security and Ukraine.

Russian officials have claimed that the alarms sounded by the West of a possible invasion of Ukraine amount to a “hybrid” information attack on Russia. They blame the alarms for the tensions between Russia and NATO and dismiss charges that the Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s borders provoked the crisis.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Western warnings that Russia could invade Ukraine and moves to pull out diplomats were “ostentatious hysteria that is not based on anything.”

“The whole world is in a fever over this. And, indeed, this is nothing but an absolutely unprecedented campaign to provoke and escalate tension in Europe. We consider this an absolutely harmful, very bad practice,” he added.

“If it had not been for this hysteria, these demonstrative destructive information campaigns, the atmosphere in Europe would have been quite different,” Peskov said. He added that Russia was entitled to hold military exercises on its own territory when and where it saw fit.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that the West, led by Washington, was conducting “informational terrorism” by naming Wednesday as the date when Russia could attack Ukraine. But he said talks with the United States and NATO over Russia’s demands for an end to NATO expansion would continue.

Speaking at a Moscow news conference after meeting his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, Lavrov claimed that Europe would “sigh with relief” if Ukraine withdrew its application to join NATO, although Ukrainian officials Monday ruled this out.

The State Department late Monday issued an alert urging U.S. citizens to immediately depart Belarus and Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova near Ukraine, because of Russian military activity in the vicinity. The department earlier that day relocated all remaining U.S. Embassy personnel in Kyiv to the far western city of Lviv, near the border with Poland, because of what Secretary of State Antony Blinken said was “the dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces” on the Ukrainian border and mounting U.S. fears of an invasion.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declined Monday to put a specific number on the Russian troop buildup over the past 24 to 48 hours but said that “should [Putin] choose to invade again, he is doing all the things you would expect him to do to make sure he’s ready for that option.”

What’s happening in the Ukraine-Russia crisis

Scholz has said he would use his trip to Moscow underscore to Putin that any attack on Ukraine would have “serious political, economic and geostrategic consequences for Russia,” but he has refrained from saying that in the event of an invasion, Germany would halt Nord Stream 2, the controversial gas pipeline between Russia and Germany that is awaiting regulatory approval.

While Scholz said “all options are on the table” when it comes to sanctions, he has not mentioned the name of the pipeline since December.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described the situation Tuesday as “extremely dangerous.”

“At the borders with Ukraine, the fate of an entire country and its people is at stake at the moment due to the Russian troop deployment,” she said, adding that it was “up to the government in Moscow to withdraw the troops and create full transparency.”

Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin, called on Scholz to issue a “crisp and clear ultimatum to Mr. Putin.” Speaking to German media, he said Ukraine expected Scholz to “bang on the notorious long table in the Kremlin to talk Mr. Putin to bring reason and bury his insane plans of conquest.”

Russia’s State Duma, its lower house of parliament, sent an appeal to Putin on Tuesday to recognize two Russian-backed separatist Ukrainian republics as independent states, a move that, should Putin agree, would effectively torpedo a stalled 2015 peace deal known as the Minsk peace agreement. The agreement is designed to end the eight-year conflict in eastern Ukraine between the separatists and Kyiv’s forces and return the regions to Ukrainian control.

Lavrov said at Tuesday’s news conference that there was no alternative to the Minsk agreement.

Zelensky has expressed frustration over the grim warnings from Western officials about an imminent Russian invasion, which have taken a toll on Ukraine’s economy. On Monday, he declared Feb. 16 — the day some media reports have suggested Russia will invade — a national day of unity, calling on citizens to fly flags and sing the national anthem together in the morning.

The State Department said Monday that Washington is offering a sovereign loan guarantee of up to $1 billion to support Ukraine’s economic reform agenda and soften any blow caused by investor panic about a possible Kremlin attack. Germany’s Scholz also announced a new, rapidly accessible loan of about $170 million while in Kyiv on Monday.

Russia has backed separatist militants in Ukraine’s east for the past seven years — and continues to demand that Kyiv implement a 2015 peace deal for the region brokered by France and Germany after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.

The Kremlin is also trying to negotiate a sweeping rewrite of the post-Cold War European security order, demanding that Ukraine be barred from joining NATO and that the Western military alliance remove forces and troops from Eastern Europe. The United States and its NATO partners have rejected the ultimatum.

One effect of Russia’s aggressive stance toward Ukraine has been unifying Western resolve. France, which had previously been more circumspect on the prospect of an imminent attack, said it now seemed Moscow had everything in place for its forces to invade.

Inside the White House preparations for a Russian invasion

“Putin wants to prevent Ukraine from exercising its sovereignty,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on France 5 TV, adding that Russia was seeking a “rump” state that was unable to choose its alliances.

Italy has had fairly warm relations with Russia until recently, but its foreign minister’s trip to Eastern Europe comes as Prime Minister Mario Draghi has emphasized his support for NATO, calling Rome a protagonist in the “Atlantic Alliance.”

Pannett reported from Sydney. Morris reported from Berlin. Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report.