Israel takes out missile near nuke site
MOSCOW/KYIV Russia announced on Thursday it was ordering troops back to base from the area near the border with Ukraine, apparently calling an end to a buildup of tens of thousands of soldiers that had alarmed the West.
The currencies of both Russia and Ukraine rose sharply after the announcement, signalling relief among investors just hours after Russia also ended war games in Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
There was no immediate response from Western countries, but a pullout was likely to be welcomed by countries that had been expressing alarm at the prospect of further Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine. Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government in the region since 2014.
The Ukrainian president's spokeswoman said this month that Russia had more than 40,000 troops deployed on Ukraine's eastern border and over 40,000 in Crimea. Around 50,000 of them were new deployments, she said.
In a tweet, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine “welcomes any steps to decrease the military presence & de-escalate the situation in Donbas (eastern Ukraine).”