Troop pullback and a Donbas invitation: Ukraine on 26 April 2021

What was Kyiv weighing on 26 April 2021? Two developments from the preceding days framed the moment: a Russian announcement about troop movements and a public invitation from Ukraine's president.

On 21 April 2021, 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 said the deployment was only to conduct drills.

Taken together, the two announcements left the question of the Donbas conflict in the hands of two capitals that had traded accusations and, within a day of each other, offered public signals of a different tone.