Ukraine said today that Russian troops had moved away from the border, just five days before the country's make-or-break presidental poll, but stopped short of confirming a full withdrawal as demanded by the West.
Moscow had announced it was pulling back its forces in a move that has the potential to deflate a bloody Kremlin-backed insurgency threatening to tear the ex-Soviet nation apart.
Kiev's Western-backed leaders were also boosted today when Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov denounced the armed rebels who have overrun a dozen cities in his eastern industrial power base as bandits who might create "genocide".
Ukraine's border service issued a surprise announcement early today that none of the estimated 40,000 Russian soldiers were now stationed within 10 kilometres of the country.
But Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, on a visit to Berlin, later said he could not confirm a withdrawal.
"I hope that the declarations by Russian politicians that the troops are to be withdrawn from Ukraine's borders do not just remain declarations".
Tensions between Moscow and the West have spiralled to Cold-War highs over the crisis in Ukraine, particularly Russia's annexation of Crimea in March and allegations it is driving a bloody insurgency in the east.
The United Nations estimates that around 130 people have died since violence in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions near the Russian border first broke out in early April.
The UN refugee agency said another 10,000 people -- many of them ethnic Tatars in Crimea -- have been internally displaced.
The United States and NATO have sent troops to Poland and the three tiny Baltic nations to calm jitters about Russian troops possibly not only overrunning Ukraine but also pushing further into Europe in a bid to reclaim ex-Soviet satellite states.
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen had said yesterday that a real Russian withdrawal -- following several earlier promises by President Vladimir Putin -- would be an "important contribution to de-escalating the crisis".
But the war of words between Washington and Moscow showed no signs of a let-up.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview broadcast today that Moscow and the West were still "slowly but surely" approaching a second Cold War.
And US Vice President Joe Biden, on a visit to Romania, blasted Russia's seizure of the Crimean peninsula, saying: "Europe's borders should never again be changed at the point of a gun".
