RUSSIA TOUTS PARTIAL PULLBACK OF TROOPS
President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would “partially pull back troops” deployed near Ukraine and was seeking a “diplomatic path” to resolving a tense standoff with the West, while President Joe Biden welcomed further negotiations but warned that a Russian invasion “remains very much a possibility.’’
It was the second day in a row that Moscow appeared to swerve away from confrontation over Ukraine, following its declaration Monday that diplomatic options were “far from exhausted.”
“We intend to and will strive to reach agreement with our partners on the questions that we posed, in order to solve them by taking a diplomatic path,” Putin said, standing alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the Kremlin.
Putin’s willingness to continue discussions was welcomed hours later by Biden, who vowed in afternoon remarks from the White House to “give the diplomacy every chance” to prevent a Russian invasion.
“As long as there is hope of a diplomatic resolution that prevents the use of force and avoids incredible human suffering that would follow,” Biden said, “we will pursue it.”
Biden cautioned, however, that Russian forces remain “in a threatening position” — an assessment that echoed the dire warning issued by the Pentagon just four days ago, that Russia could launch an attack as early as today.
The urgency of that warning seemed to recede Tuesday as Putin adopted a more conciliatory tone and announced the intention to pull back troops. But much of Russia’s menacing force near Ukraine’s border remained in place, and Western officials said it was far too soon to exhale over the danger that Putin could launch a large-scale war. They also said it was too early to assess Moscow’s claim that it was pulling troops back from Ukraine’s border.
“The Russian defense ministry reported today that some military units are leaving the positions near Ukraine. That would be good,” Biden said. “But we have not yet verified that.”
The Biden administration has threatened severe economic sanctions in the event of an invasion, while offering negotiations on some of Russia’s security concerns.
The carrot-and-stick approach, and the mixed signals from Moscow, illustrated the gamesmanship and the high-stakes rhetorical tactics that have marked the crisis over Russia’s troop buildup. The United States has been declassifying intelligence on Russia’s plans and sounding urgent warnings about a looming attack, in what American officials describe as a strategy meant to deter Putin from going through with an invasion.
Putin, by contrast, has kept his true intentions a mystery, mixing threats and military moves with optimistic appraisals about the potential for diplomacy — statements that have grown louder in recent days. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday and said the West had “responded positively” to Russia’s initiatives.
At the same time, the Russian leader and other senior officials Tuesday made it clear that they saw the military threat as a tool for forcing the West to recognize a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe — and that they were prepared to continue to keep the pressure on as negotiations continued.
Lavrov said he was open to American proposals such as negotiations over the
placement of missiles in Europe; the outcome, he said, could be a “very decent, comprehensive package result.”
Asked Tuesday how Russia would act next, Putin responded with a slight smile: “According to the plan.”
He said Russia would seek to achieve its key aims — centered on halting NATO expansion and forcing the alliance to draw down its military presence in Eastern Europe — peacefully, but that the outcome of the process “does not only depend on us.”
U.S. officials have dismissed
those demands as non-starters, and speaking from the East Room of the White House, Biden promised not to “sacrifice basic principles” that accord countries a right to choose their own alliances.
The president also reached out to the Russian people, after warning that a war would cause great human suffering. “The United States and NATO are not a threat to Russia,” he said, adding: “You are not our enemy.”
Despite the optimism Tuesday, the diplomatic
path ahead was far from clear. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it would soon send, and make public, a 10-page response to security proposals that the United States and NATO submitted last month. Italy’s foreign minister was scheduled to visit Moscow today.
But beyond that, after a flurry of high-level Western phone calls and meetings with Putin and Lavrov, the diplomatic calendar appeared empty. Russia has said it will skip the Munich Security Conference this weekend, which had been a
marquee annual event for Western officials to sit down with their Russian counterparts.
Russia is demanding a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, which leaders of the alliance describe as no more than a faroff prospect that is not currently under consideration. Ukrainian officials suggested this week that their country’s constitutionally enshrined aspiration to join NATO could be up for negotiation in order to avert war.
Germany’s Scholz, who took over as chancellor in December, hinted that finding agreement among Russia, Ukraine and NATO on that issue could be a way out of the crisis.
“Everyone must step back a bit here and make it clear to themselves that we just can’t have a possible military conflict over a question that is not on the agenda,” Scholz told German reporters in Moscow after leaving the Kremlin. “It’s now our task to find a path that is OK for everyone in terms of their own positions and views.”
The White House warned last week that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen “any time,” including before the Winter Olympics end Sunday.
On Tuesday, Russia appeared to relish an opportunity to prove the United States wrong. A Defense Ministry spokesperson delivered a statement saying that some troops near Ukraine had “completed their tasks” and were heading back to their bases; state television aired footage of tanks being loaded onto rail cars.
Western officials said it was too soon to tell whether the announced pullback
would reduce the menace on Ukraine’s borders, but in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO, said signals from Moscow gave grounds for “cautious optimism.”
But it was also clear that Putin could maintain pressure on the West and on Ukraine without firing a shot — including by new military moves or other means like cyberattacks. On Tuesday evening, Ukraine’s defense ministry and army, as well as the interfaces of the country’s two largest banks, were hit by cyberattacks that caused some websites to go down and caused problems for customers seeking to withdraw cash.
In Ukraine, worries about a possible Russian invasion remained.
“When we see the withdrawal, we will believe in deescalation,” the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told reporters.
Western officials and analysts said the threat to Ukraine remained significant, and that it was too early to make firm conclusions about a possible drawdown without more information about which units were being sent back to their bases.
The Russian Defense Ministry only announced a withdrawal of units from the country’s Western and Southern Military Districts, whose usual bases are the closest to Ukraine, so the units could easily return to the border region. Units from the Central and Eastern districts, which are some of Russia’s most advanced, remain deployed near the Ukraine border, according to satellite imagery.