In a fiery statement on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova poured scorn on weeks of reports and claims from US and European officials that Moscow’s armed forces could be just hours away from launching a strike against its neighbor.
“15 February 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed,” she wrote. According to her, the West has been “shamed and destroyed without firing a single shot.”
It was not clear how many units were being withdrawn, and by what distance, after a build-up of an estimated 130,000 Russian troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine.
The development drew a cautious response from Ukraine and Britain but prompted a sharp rally on financial markets. Western military analysts said it was too soon to be sure of the extent of any de-escalation.
"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.
He accused the United States of fuelling the crisis by warning repeatedly of an impending invasion, to the point where Peskov said President Vladimir 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.
Britain, which with the United States has led the warnings of imminent action, reacted cautiously.
"The Russians have claimed that they have no plans for an invasion, but we will need to see a full scale removal of troops to show that is true," Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told LBC radio.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv would only believe that Russia was moving to de-escalate the situation if it saw for itself that Russian troops were being pulled back.
"If we see a withdrawal, we will believe in a de-escalation," Interfax Ukraine quoted him as saying.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the latest Western diplomatic mission to defuse the crisis, began talks with Putin in the Kremlin.
A Russian defence ministry spokesman said that while large-scale drills across the country continued, some units of the Southern and Western military districts adjacent to Ukraine had completed their exercises and started returning to base.