Ukraine’s leadership reacted with caution to news of Russia’s partial withdrawal. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the troop withdrawal “proportionally reduces tension.”

“Ukraine is always vigilant, yet welcomes any steps to decrease the military presence & de-escalate the situation in Donbas,” he said in a tweet, referring to a region bordering Russia. “Ukraine seeks peace.”

Mr. Putin, meanwhile, responded to an earlier invitation by Mr. Zelensky to meet in Ukraine’s war-torn east, saying the Ukrainian leader would be welcome to discuss bilateral relations in Moscow. “If President Zelensky wants to start restoring these relations, we will only welcome it,” Mr. Putin said.

To solve the conflict in the Donbas, Mr. Putin said, Mr. Zelensky should communicate with the separatists in the breakaway territories in Donetsk and Luhansk, where ethnic Russians comprise a majority of the population.

Igor Korotchenko, a pro-Kremlin military expert in Moscow, said that Russia had shown that it is ready to act by force if necessary, but the withdrawal of such a significant number of forces “could be interpreted as the fact that the Ukrainian crisis is being de-escalated,” he said.

He said that Russia would again be “ready to concentrate its forces where there might be threats to its national interests.”

“This is not [an] olive branch…it’s reasonable pragmatism,” he said.

Some Ukrainian officials saw the news as a sign that Moscow’s main goal was to intimidate Kyiv and pressure the West rather than to invade.

“Putin conducted a strategic bluff designed to scare NATO and Ukraine—but we were not afraid,” said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser on national security in the Zelensky administration. “The bluff is over and it failed.”

Experts on the region’s security issues, however, warned that the extent of Russia’s withdrawal and the precise areas affected remain unclear.

“The statement is a positive development, but I would not count the matter resolved,” said Michael Kofman, senior research scientist at the Russia Studies Program of CNA, a nonprofit research group in Arlington, Va.

“If Russia actually begins to redeploy as suggested, then it is fair to interpret this affair as a coercive demonstration, but it also appears that some forces will remain,” he said.

—Nonna Fomenko in Moscow and James Marson in Brussels contributed to this article.

Source - www.wsj.com