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What did Russia's border pullback announcement mean?
Summary
A look back at the days around 23 April 2021, when Moscow announced a troop withdrawal and Kyiv offered a meeting on the front line.
What was Russia signalling on 23 April 2021? A day earlier, on 22 April, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its forces would begin moving away from the Ukrainian border on 23 April.
The announcement followed weeks of accusations. Ukraine and its western allies had charged that Russia was trying to provoke conflict by moving troops to the border. Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu countered that the deployment was only for drills.
The pullback also came shortly after a diplomatic offer from Kyiv. On 21 April, President Volodymyr Zelensky invited his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to a face-to-face meeting on the front line in the war-torn Donbas, to negotiate an end to the conflict.
Taken together, the two days set out the competing positions. Moscow framed its troop movements as exercises that were now concluding, while Kyiv put forward a direct meeting as a route to ending the fighting in Donbas. As of 23 April 2021, the withdrawal was due to begin, and the invitation to meet on the front line had been made public.
