Russia’s announcement of a troop withdrawal prompted some sighs of relief and a bump in stock markets early Tuesday, but any hope for a quick resolution went out the window as NATO said it had yet to see proof of the pullout and things heated up in Ukraine’s occupied territories.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kulebo was skeptical of the announcement made by Russia’s Defense Ministry that it was withdrawing some of the 130,000 troops massed at the border with Ukraine following the completion of training drills. In a statement on Twitter, he said he’d believe it only when he sees a “real withdrawal” take place.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters there was reason for “cautious optimism” after Moscow’s announcement, “but so far we have not seen any sign of de-escalation on the ground from the Russian side.”
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The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, noted that Moscow had made a “similar claim” about de-escalation in December that turned out to be bogus.
Moscow, meanwhile, tried to use the development to declare check mate against the West, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying Vladimir Putin likes to mock the West for its “maniacal” prediction of a Russian invasion of Ukraine this week.
“He sometimes even jokes and asks if the exact time for when the war will start has been published anywhere,” Peskov told reporters, according to RIA Novosti.
Soon after the announcement of the purported pullback on Tuesday, as Putin said he was “ready” to work toward de-escalation surrounding Ukraine, the official websites of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces, along with the sites of several Ukrainian banks, were hit by a powerful cyber attack.
“It is possible that the aggressor resorted to the tactic of petty dirty tricks, because by and large his aggressive plans are not working,” Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said in a statement, without naming Russia.
Tensions also threatened to erupt in Ukraine’s occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, controlled by Russian-backed separatists for the past eight years.
Russian lawmakers threw their support behind a plan for Putin to officially recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent—a move that would destroy the stalled Minsk agreements that aim to broker peace in eastern Ukraine. Putin appeared to reject the resolution, however, saying at a joint press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Sholz that “we must do everything for the resolution of issues in the Donbas, but do it above all else, based on the possibilities for the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements.”
In what is likely not a coincidence, Russian lawmakers publicly advocated for the plan to recognize LNR and DNR as pro-Kremlin authorities in Luhansk claimed to have foiled a Ukrainian-orchestrated terrorist attack.
Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate, meanwhile, warned that it has seen a surge in the number of commanders from the Russian Armed Forces conducting “inspections” of supposedly independent Donetsk and Luhansk troops to check for battle readiness.
Separatist military authorities were also said to be conducting “raids” to find new military recruits and track down anyone dodging service.
Read it at Financial Times
