February 2022 — MHCE Newsletter

22 | MHCE - News www.mhce.us FEBRUARY 2022 EDITION
headed, other than “to places of permanent
deployment.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the
troops were returning “according to plan.”
He said such drills always adhered to a
schedule — regardless of “who thinks what
and who gets hysterical about it, who is
deploying real informational terrorism.”
Ukraine's leaders expressed skepticism.
Russia Says Some Forces Pulling
Back amid Ukraine Crisis
MOSCOW — Russia said Tuesday that
some units participating in military exercises
were returning to their bases, adding to
glimmers of hope that the Kremlin may not
be planning to invade Ukraine imminently.
But it gave no details on where the troops
were pulling back from, or how many.
That muddied efforts to determine the
significance of the announcement, which
buoyed world financial markets and the longsuffering
ruble after weeks of escalation
in Europe’s worst East-West standoff in
decades. It came a day after Russia’s foreign
minister indicated the country was ready to
keep talking about the security grievances
that led to the Ukraine crisis — a gesture that
changed the tenor after weeks of tensions.
Yet hours before the Russian Defense
Ministry statement about the troops, a U.S.
defense official said Russian units were
moving closer to the Ukrainian border –
not away from it. And Western officials
continued to warn that the Russian military
could attack at any time, with some floating
Wednesday as a possible invasion day.
NATO's chief said the alliance had no proof
yet of a Russian retreat.
The fears of an invasion grew from the fact
that Russia has massed more than 130,000
troops near Ukraine. Russia denies it has
any such plans, despite placing troops
on Ukraine’s borders to the north, south
and east and launching massive military
drills nearby. U.S. and other NATO allies,
meanwhile, have moved troops and military
supplies toward Ukraine’s western flank,
although not to confront Russian forces, and
promised more financial aid to the ex-Soviet
nation.
Moscow brandished Tuesday’s pullback
announcement as proof that fears of war
were fabricated by a hostile, U.S.-led West:
“February 15, 2022, will go down in history
as the day Western war propaganda failed.
Humiliated and destroyed without a single
shot fired,” Russian Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Maria Zakharova tweeted.
Yet Ukraine remains effectively surrounded
on three sides by military forces from its
much more powerful neighbor, and even if
the immediate threat recedes, longer-term
risk remains. Russia annexed the Black Sea
peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014,
and some 14,000 people have been killed in
fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-
Russia separatists in the country's east.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not
indicate where the withdrawing troops had
been deployed or how many were leaving.
It released images of tanks and armored
vehicles rolling onto a train, and a tank
commander saluting his forces while a
military band played. The ministry did not
disclose where or when the images were
taken, or where the military vehicles were
“We won’t believe when we hear, we’ll
believe when we see. When we see troops
pulling out, we’ll believe in de-escalation,"
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
said.
Speaking in Brussels, NATO Secretary-
General Jens Stoltenberg said: “So far,
we have not seen any de-escalation on
the ground, not seen any signs of reduced
Russian military presence on the borders of
Ukraine.”
However, he added that there are “some
grounds for cautious optimism” for
diplomatic efforts, given the signals coming
from Moscow in recent days.
Stoltenberg said Russia has in the past
moved into areas with troops and equipment,
then pulled back leaving military materiel in
place for rapid use later. He said that NATO
wants to see a “significant and enduring
withdrawal of forces, troops, and not least
the heavy equipment.”