RUSSIAN MOVEMENT? – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:  There are reports of some Russian troop movements away from Russia's border with Ukraine, but I'd be awfully careful about this.  From Fox: 

U.S. defense officials say that Russia has pulled a large number of forces away from the Ukraine border, a withdrawal that the U.S. has been demanding for weeks and a move that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called "promising."

Although defense officials were not authorized to speak about the precise numbers, a senior defense official traveling with Defense Secretary Hagel told The Washington Post that approximately seven Russian battalions remain of those that were deployed to the east and south of Ukraine, amounting to a couple of thousand troops.

U.S. officials had previously estimated as many as 40,000 Russian forces had been aligned along the border with a restive eastern Ukraine that has been wracked with violence between government security forces and pro-Russian separatists.

Hagel didn't provide any details to reporters traveling with him en route to an Asian defense conference in Singapore at the start of a 12-day overseas trip which will include a meeting with NATO defense ministers in Brussels next week. However, he called the withdrawal promising.

"They are not where they need to be and won't be until all of their troops that they positioned along that border a couple of months ago are gone," Hagel told The Associated Press.

"We do know that thousands of Russian troops have been pulled back and are moving away. But we also know that there are still thousands of Russian troops still there that have not yet moved," Hagel said.

COMMENT:  Whatever Putin does will be done in Russia's and his own interest, not ours.  Unless there's a full withdrawal, this initial step is meaningless

Ukraine now has a new president, described as pro-Western.  Putin knows that, for the sake of appearances, he has to "negotiate" with this new guy, at least for a time.   But in terms of power, Putin holds the cards.  Watch him chip away at the eastern provinces of Ukraine, and bring them into the Russian orbit.  Who's resisting him?

May 30,  2014