Russian Army Starts Withdrawing as Medvedev Sees Cold War

By Daryna Krasnolutska, Ilya Arkhipov and Daria Marchak May 20, 2014 9:15 AM ET

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev discusses sanctions and relations with the U.S. with Bloomberg's Ryan Chilcote.

Russian troops are pulling back from Ukraine’s border, according to state television in Moscow, as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned the U.S. and the European Union they risked provoking a new Cold War.

Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. all said they see no signs of a pullback so far. Russian state TV reported today that soldiers in three Russian regions bordering Ukraine have started to return to their bases after receiving an order from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Soldiers are packing and “deciding on routes to come back to their permanent bases,” state TV said.

After annexing Crimea in March, Russia has been accused by the government in Kiev and its U.S. and EU allies of fomenting unrest in the mostly Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has in recent days welcomed contacts between the Kiev authorities and supporters of a decentralization of powers to the regions.

“Russia has talked troop withdrawals before so there’s a lot of posturing, and we’ll have to wait several days to see if it’s for real,” Joerg Forbrig, senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., said by phone. “A lot of these troops don’t even have permanent bases in the area.”

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