As Russia’s soldiers begin to pull back from the Ukrainian border, they leave not just tank tracks and footprints in the mud — but a message to Ukraine and its western supporters that Moscow remains a threat to Europe’s south-eastern flank. Russia’s announcement on Thursday that it would wind down its military build-up eased fears that the Kremlin was planning for a full-scale confrontation with Kyiv.

The two nations have been mired in conflict since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists started a war in Ukraine’s Donbas region and Russia annexed Crimea. Meanwhile, a peace accord signed in Minsk in 2015 has stalled over Kyiv’s reluctance to give the separatist-controlled areas autonomy in its constitution and Moscow’s refusal to give Ukraine back control over its border before a handover of power in the Donbas.

But with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, pleading this month for Nato membership and this week inviting Vladimir Putin to meet him in the conflict zone, the signal from the Russian leader was clear: Moscow still calls the shots in the Donbas. Zelensky’s offer to meet Putin was a tacit acknowledgment that Ukraine cannot renege on the Minsk deal, said Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at CNA, a US policy studies non-profit.

“They very much wanted to convince Zelensky that Kyiv needs to change policy course,” he said. “They really wanted to make Kyiv sweat and . . . to show Ukrainians exactly what they can do to them eventually — that Ukraine will ultimately be largely on its own and that this is a reality his administration needs to face.”