Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had withdrawn some troops from the Ukrainian border and was open to renewed talks to end a standoff with the West, but U.S. and European officials said they had seen no evidence of a significant drawdown of forces.

Mr. Putin’s comments Tuesday were part of a recent string of mixed messages from the Kremlin and capped a day of diplomacy and military maneuvering that left Western leaders puzzled about his intentions as roughly 130,000 heavily armed Russian soldiers were positioned...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had withdrawn some troops from the Ukrainian border and was open to renewed talks to end a standoff with the West, but U.S. and European officials said they had seen no evidence of a significant drawdown of forces.

Mr. Putin’s comments Tuesday were part of a recent string of mixed messages from the Kremlin and capped a day of diplomacy and military maneuvering that left Western leaders puzzled about his intentions as roughly 130,000 heavily armed Russian soldiers were positioned around Ukraine.

Earlier Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said a relatively small number of troops had completed exercises and were headed back to their bases. But it emphasized that large-scale maneuvers were continuing across a broad front.

At a press conference after a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Mr. Putin said, “There is nothing to comment on here. A decision was made to partially withdraw troops.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in Moscow.

Photo: Sergey Guneev/Kremlin/SPUTNIK/REUTERS

The Russian leader said Moscow was “ready to follow the negotiation track” but that the implementation of Russian demands, including a halt to expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are “an unconditional priority for us.”

NATO says it won’t abandon its Open Door Policy that allows membership to any European state in a position to advance its principles and contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.

However, speaking to German journalists after his meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Scholz reiterated that Western allies don’t expect Ukraine to join the alliance for the foreseeable future and signaled this could help address Russia’s security concerns.

“There is a fact and this fact is that all participants know that a Ukrainian membership of NATO is not on the agenda,” he said. “That’s why it’s a matter of leadership for all protagonists, in Russia, in Ukraine, in NATO, to ensure that we do not descend into an absurd situation based on something that is not going to be part of global developments in the near future.”

Officials in Ukraine and elsewhere voiced skepticism that Russia’s position was softening and said it was unclear what signals Moscow was intending to send.

Before Mr. Putin spoke on Tuesday, Russia’s Parliament urged Mr. Putin to recognize two Russian-backed separatist republics in eastern Ukraine as independent states. Also Tuesday, the Ukrainian government said a suspected cyberattack had hit the country’s Defense Ministry and two state banks.

Oleksii Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council played down the importance of Russia’s troop-withdrawal announcement, saying the soldiers could be quickly returned to Ukraine’s borders.

A Ukrainian serviceman carried an antitank weapon on Tuesday during an exercise in eastern Ukraine.

Photo: Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press

“We have to await confirmation from our intelligence community that this is in fact occurring,” Mr. Danilov said. “The turning point will be when the Russian Federation realizes that we are a separate state, that we have the full right to be one, and stops trying to liquidate us.”

U.S. officials on Monday said the Russian military presence near Ukraine had grown to 105 battalion tactical groups, up from 83 groups earlier this month. Russia has also moved around 500 combat aircraft within range of Ukraine and has 40 combat ships in the Black Sea, according to U.S. officials.

In a call Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the U.S. needed to see “verifiable, credible, meaningful de-escalation,” and said a “window remains to resolve the crisis peacefully,” the State Department said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he saw mixed signals coming from the Kremlin. “Clearly there are signs for a diplomatic opening…we are seeing Russian openness to conversation,” he said.

However, Mr. Johnson said the intelligence coming from the Ukrainian border was “not encouraging,” with more troops gathering there and field hospitals being built. “We think there is an avenue for more diplomacy. We have seen some positive signs,” he said. “If that is correct let’s build on that.”

Russia released footage on Tuesday of tanks being loaded onto rail transport as its Defense Ministry said it had pulled back troops from near Ukraine following military exercises. The date and location of the video was not immediately clear. Western officials have warned Russian combat units were moving into forward positions. Photo: Handout/Russian Defense Ministry/AFP via Getty Images The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also noted potentially hopeful signs of a diplomatic opening from Moscow. “But so far we have not seen any sign of de-escalation on the ground,” he said.

U.S. officials have said Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine as soon as Wednesday. Russia has said it has no intention of attacking Ukraine.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized repeated Western warnings of a Russian attack on Ukraine, slamming what it has consistently described as a U.S.-led disinformation effort aimed at vilifying Russia.

Satellite imagery on Sunday showed Russian deployments around Ukraine, including jet fighters.

Photo: Satellite image 2022 Maxar Technologies

A Russian battle group in formation on Sunday in Soloti, Russia, east of the border with Ukraine.

Photo: /Associated Press

“February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western propaganda for war failed,” Maria Zakharova, the ministry’s spokeswoman, wrote on Facebook. “Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot being fired.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Tuesday that any move by Russia to recognize the Moscow-backed separatist statelets in Ukraine’s east would signify the Kremlin’s withdrawal from international agreements that Kyiv signed with Moscow over the regions.

“Such a move will cause a serious blow to the politico-diplomatic settlement that Ukraine and its partners have been actively engaged to promote,” he said in a statement on his ministry’s website.

Recognition by Moscow of the two separatist republics as independent would effectively end diplomatic efforts that began in 2015 when an agreement known as Minsk-2 stopped most hostilities in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics were carved out following an armed insurgency that began in 2014.

Russia has recently been increasing pressure on Kyiv to abide by the terms of that agreement, which Ukraine agreed to under military pressure. The Minsk-2 accord called for the decentralization of political power in Ukraine and constitutional changes that, under an interpretation favored by Moscow, could give Russia veto power over Ukraine’s major policies.

If Mr. Putin grants the lawmakers’ request to recognize the separatist republics, he could tout it as a move to stand up for Russian interests and say he has made the West listen to Moscow’s security demands with his military buildup.

At the same time, recognition of the republics could give him the chance to send weapons and troops onto their territories and potentially give him a pretext to attack Ukraine in the name of defending Russia’s allies while continuing to weaken Kyiv using economic and other tools.

Russia has long accused Ukraine of discriminating against Russian speakers in Donbas, something Mr. Putin reiterated in his remarks, saying the government in Kyiv was systematically committing human rights violations “on a massive scale” in the breakaway regions.

A military instructor was teaching a schoolboy on Tuesday to shoot with a Kalashnikov rifles in Lviv, western Ukraine.

Photo: yuriy dyachyshyn/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Several Russian lawmakers said the vote could give Mr. Putin more leverage in his negotiations over obtaining security guarantees for Russia and could help resolve the crisis in the Kremlin’s favor.

Mr. Danilov, the Ukrainian national-security official, said recognition of the Russian-controlled statelets in Donetsk and Luhansk wouldn’t change much on the ground because the areas are already controlled by Moscow, which has distributed Russian passports to their residents.

He said Kyiv has no intention of seizing the region by force because that would result in civilian casualties.

—Matthew Luxmoore and Max Colchester in London and Bojan Pancevski and Laurence Norman in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com and Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com