Did Russia's border pullback ease tensions in April 2021?

What was the state of play between Russia and Ukraine on 27 April 2021? The days leading up to that date had brought two notable signals, one military and one diplomatic.

On 21 April 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to a face-to-face meeting on the front line in the war-torn Donbas, with the aim of negotiating an end to the conflict.

On 22 April 2021, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it would move its forces away from the Ukrainian border beginning the following day. Ukraine and its western allies had accused Russia of trying to provoke conflict by moving troops to the border. Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu had claimed the deployment was only to conduct drills.

Taken together, the two announcements set the backdrop to 27 April 2021: an open invitation to talks from Kyiv, and a declared Russian withdrawal from the border area after a build-up that Ukraine and its allies had treated as provocative, while Moscow described it as exercises.