Russian pullback from the buildup against Ukraine

Steven Rosenberg analyses the current drawdown of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border, What is Russia doing? BBC News 04/23/2021:

Although Russia has shrugged off the build-up as training exercises in response to "threatening" actions from Nato, it is also said to be planning to cordon off areas of the Black Sea to foreign shipping. Ukraine fears its ports could be affected.
Russia said all along that these were nothing more than military exercises.
But Moscow knew very well that its troop movements close to Ukraine and in annexed Crimea were making a lot of people very nervous: in Ukraine, Europe and in America.

And that was the point.

Here is an English-language Deutsche Welle report on the drawdown, Russia withdraws troops from Ukraine border 04/22/2021:

Clara Ferreira Marques reports on one important element of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the need for Russia to supply water to Crimea, the Ukrainian area that Russia illegally annexed in 2014: (Crimea’s Water Crisis Is an Impossible Problem for Putin Bloomberg Opinion 03/19/2021):

Ukraine dammed the North Crimean Canal seven years ago, cutting off the source of nearly 90% of the region’s fresh water and setting it back to the pre-1960s, when much was arid steppe. Add a severe drought and sizzling temperatures last year, plus years of underinvestment in pipes and drilling, and fields are dry. In the capital Simferopol and elsewhere, water has been rationed.

Tiny Crimea gave Putin a boost, when, following protests that overthrew Kyiv’s Russia-friendly government, he seized a territory that belonged to Moscow for centuries but had been part of an independent Ukraine since 1991. The annexation of the territory that’s equal to less than 0.2% of Russia’s total helped lift Putin’s national popularity to record levels in the year or so that followed. That bump has since faded.

Today locals, who were made ambitious promises in 2014, are struggling with the fallout from a wide-ranging nationalization drive that's not always served their interests, a poorly handled, muffled coronavirus crisis — and dry taps. Sanctions-inflated prices, high even after a $3.7 billion bridge over the Kerch Strait linked the territory to Russia, have meanwhile eaten away at pension and salary increases. Opinion polls are hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence reveals building frustration. [my emphasis]

Another major assumption on which Putin's foreign policy has relied is to prevent any additional countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, from becoming part of NATO. The former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became full NATO members in 2004. As Laurence Peter report in 2014 (Why Nato-Russia relations soured before Ukraine BBC News 09/03/2014):

In 1999 - nearly 10 years after the Berlin Wall fell - Nato admitted three former Warsaw Pact countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

More former Soviet bloc countries joined Nato in 2004: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Russia was particularly riled by the expansion of Nato to the Baltic states, which were formerly in the USSR and viewed from Moscow as part of the "near abroad". That phrase, commonly used by Russian politicians, implies that ex-Soviet states should not act against Russia's strategic interests. [my emphasis]

Peter also reported, "In early 2008 Nato also held out the prospect of future Nato membership to Georgia. The Kremlin saw that as a direct provocation, just as it saw closer Nato ties with Ukraine." And in both Georgia and Ukraine, Russia is now supporting small, pro-Russian "independent republics" on the territories of Georgia and Ukraine. And they occupied and formally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. As a practical matter, this blocks those countries from joining NATO. Because to incorporate them into NATO, the NATO allies would either have to formally accept the Crimean annexation and the "independent" mini-republics, or commit themselves to defending the whole current legal territories of Georgia and Ukraine. Which means NATO would be committed to engaging in a war with Russia to push its forces out of the occupied areas.

It's entirely possible and very likely that Western diplomats have spun some theoretical scenarios in which Georgia and Ukraine could become NATO members without that being a de facto declaration of war on Russia. That's part of what diplomats do. But it's hard to see how that could actually be pulled off in the real world.