MOSCOW (Dispatches) --
Russia said on Tuesday some of its military units were returning to their bases after exercises near Ukraine and mocked repeated Western warnings about a looming invasion.
Russia did not say how many units were being withdrawn, and how far, after a build-up of some 130,000 Russian troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine.
“We’ve always said the troops will return to their bases after the exercises are over. This is the case this time as well,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia has always denied planning to invade, saying it can exercise troops on its own territory as it sees fit. It has been pressing for a set of security guarantees from the West, saying it fears NATO is encroaching on its Western flank.
Moscow said the troop movements it announced on Tuesday were proof that Western talk of war had been both false and hysterical.
“February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
“In terms of the timing of an attack, it could be imminent,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Tuesday. She said Russian troops could reach Ukraine’s capital Kyiv “very, very quickly”.
Truss said Britain would need to see a full-scale removal of Russian troops to back up Russia’s claim it had no plan to invade Ukraine. France said it had yet to confirm the return of some troops to bases, though this would be a positive sign.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the latest Western diplomatic mission to defuse the crisis, began talks with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
Putin said he was ready to continue working with the West on security issues to de-escalate tensions over Ukraine.
“We are ready to work further together. We are ready to go down the negotiations track,” Putin told a press conference following talks with Scholz.
Video footage published by Russia’s defense ministry showed some tanks and other armored vehicles being loaded onto railway flatcars.
Russian shares, government bonds and the rouble, which have been hit by fears of impending conflict, rose sharply, and Ukrainian government bonds also rallied. Oil dropped more than 3% from a seven-year high reached on Monday.
Western military analysts said they needed more information to judge the significance of the latest troop movements.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov accused the United States of fuelling the crisis by warning repeatedly of an impending invasion, to the point where he said Putin had made jokes about it.
“He asks (us) to find out if the exact time, to the hour, of the start of the war has been published. It’s impossible to be understanding of this manic information madness,” Peskov told reporters.