Curiouser and curiouser. First Russia pulls back some troops, now the tsar sounds open to diplomacy.

That would be a welcome anti-climax to the biggest military deployment in Europe in decades.

If Putin’s decided that he needs to own the NATO libs by defying their predictions of an imminent invasion, that’s an outcome everyone can live happily with.

Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the U.S. and NATO rejected Moscow’s demand to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.

But the U.S. and NATO have agreed to discuss a range of security measures that Russia had previously proposed.

Putin said Russia is ready to engage in talks on limiting the deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe, transparency of drills and other confidence-building measures but emphasized the need for the West to heed Russia’s main demands.

“February 15, 2022, will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired,” the Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted. If they really have called off the invasion and they need to huff and puff about western propaganda to save face, have at it. Barring some major secret concession to Putin, it’d be a momentous victory for the White House and NATO to have stopped the biggest war in Europe since World War II without any bombs falling.

Has the invasion been called off, though, or merely postponed?

Ukraine’s president had been warned by western intelligence that tomorrow, the 16th, was the day Russia planned to attack. He decided to make it a “day of unity” for Ukrainians, calling international attention to the date. Maybe Putin looked at that and concluded he’d appear foolish if he followed through by invading on the schedule the west predicted, essentially confirming that western intel knows the moves the Kremlin intends to make before they’ve been made. So he stepped back and called for more diplomacy, altering the timeline for war.

But maybe not ending it. While it’s apparently true that some Russian troops have withdrawn, those units “are from the military districts closest to Ukraine — meaning they would remain relatively close to the country even if they are pulled back to their bases.” When Putin sends the units from Siberia home, that’ll be a strong signal that the threat has diminished. Sending home units that are based near the Ukrainian border and can redeploy quickly when the order for attack is given doesn’t prove anything.

In fact, the secretary general of NATO claimed today that they “have not seen any sign of de-escalation.” Russian forces may be moving around but that’s a cold comfort if heavy weapons remain in place.

This also isn’t encouraging:

Scholz pushes back against Putin's remarks on Yugoslavia – says that was a response to "mass murder." Putin cuts in: "according to our estimates, what is happening today in Donbas is genocide."

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) February 15, 2022

There’s no genocide in Donbas but that’s what we’d expect Putin to claim as a pretext to invade. It’s a humanitarian incursion, aimed at rescuing the poor ethnic Russians being put to the sword by feral Ukrainian Nazis. Why, it’d be a crime for Russia not to invade.

Coincidentally, the Russian parliament passed two resolutions today calling on Putin to recognize the parts of Ukraine contested by Russian-backed separatists, Luhansk and Donetsk, as independent. Michael Weiss knows what comes next:

The biggest danger of this if it goes forward is LNR and DNR soliciting or "inviting" Russia in as "peace-keepers," citing some alleged Ukrainian attack on them. And of course how Ukraine responds to that militarily.

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) February 15, 2022

The Russian military will move in to guarantee the “sovereignty” of the new republics, resulting in de facto annexation by Russia.

Needless to say, the U.S. and NATO will never agree to Russia’s demand to keep western forces out of eastern Europe. The whole point of the alliance is to halt Russian attempts at westward expansion by reinforcing Europe’s eastern flank. They might agree to the demand that Ukraine be disinvited from joining NATO but they’d be fools to do so under the current circumstances. Letting Russia dictate NATO’s membership at gunpoint would incentivize future brinksmanship.

Maybe Biden could throw Putin a bone by saying there’ll be no opportunity for Ukraine to join NATO *during his presidency*, which was never going to happen anyway. Russia will need some sort of cosmetic concession from the U.S. to allow it to withdraw while claiming “victory.”

Because if they don’t get one and withdraw anyway, this will look like a massive defeat. One expert put it this way to CNBC:

“What did [Putin] achieve?” [Timothy Ash] said. “He managed to rally the West back around NATO, which again has common purpose. Ukrainian sovereignty [has been] affirmed, even strengthened.”

As a result of Russia’s aggressive activity, Ukraine’s military was now better armed and better able to defend itself, Ash added.

“Russia has been called out as an unreliable energy supplier — the West will accelerate diversification away from Russian energy sources,” he said. “Some will say [Putin] was the Russian leader who actually lost Ukraine. That will be his mark in history — he accelerated Ukraine’s Western orientation.”

Democrat Chris Murphy made the same argument in a Twitter thread last night, that for all the hype about Putin being a master strategist it’s hard to see how he’d gain more from invading Ukraine than he’d lose. The Russian army would take casualties, Putin and his country would face punishing sanctions and economic boycotts, and NATO might end up more united than it’s been in years.

White House sources fleshed that out in conversations with David Ignatius: “The sanctions that would follow an assault on Ukraine would make it hard for Russia to sell its energy abroad or to buy the technology it needs to supply its defense industry, let alone the rest of the economy. Russia’s financial reserves are large, but they would quickly be depleted as it sought to bolster its currency and pay its bills. U.S. officials reckon that under sanctions, Russia would be starved of inputs, and China, its only major ally, couldn’t fill the gaps.” To the extent that retaking Ukraine is a legacy play for Putin, maybe he realized that his legacy from this war wouldn’t be what he expects.

Not even the Russian people are clamoring for an invasion. It’d be one thing if nationalism were sweeping Moscow, demanding Ukraine’s reintegration into a Russian empire, but the mood among the population seems to be that a war would be ludicrous and only western propagandists actively seek one. That doesn’t sound like a public primed to cheer wildly if Putin starts bombing Kiev tomorrow.

My guess is that the attack has merely been delayed, not canceled, but cross your fingers.