My guess is that Putin moved all the troops in the hope that he could extract some kind of concessions from NATO and Ukraine without going to war. What concessions would have satisfied him is unclear. According to one German general something quite small, more symbolic that material, might have been enough: anything that he could present as a victory in the tame Russian media. But NATO and Ukraine offered him nothing at all. Bringing the troops back without having achieved anything would have made him look weak or stupid. So he had to invade.

If that's roughtly right, why didn't NATO and Ukraine offer him some small symbolic concessions? Well, I would guess that one reason is that the US administration wants there to be a small war in Europe because then Western Europe will stop buying Russian gas and will have to buy US gas instead. This is obviously something they care about a lot because they've been trying really hard to stop Nord Stream 2, even to the extent of applying sanctions against German companies involved in the project. Also look at the propaganda they've been producing against Nord Stream 2. Almost every issue of The Economist has a few paragraphs claiming that building an additional, alternative pipeline will somehow make Germany "dependent" on Russian gas, as opposed to just giving them another option.

Anyway, it's a mess, but I hope they hold back on the sanctions a bit, so that they have some in reserve to apply later, and that people like Macron carry on with the diplomacy.

Does that mean he doesn't recognize the non-breakaway regions as independent? He's going to annex the rest of Ukraine?

That means that as soon as it is recognized, Russia will move a lot of weaponry to those regions(already).

Thanks, I think I get it now. These are regions within Ukraine that broke away from the Ukraine govt and want to join or ally with Russia, not the other way around. Or something like that.

As I understand it, Russia astroturfed an independence movement in Ukraine as a pretext to break off a chunk of it for themselves. The "Ukrainians" in these regions "declare independence" then Russia "recognizes their independence" and moves troops in to support that recognition. Eventually a "referendum" or something is held to accept Russia's generous offer to become a state/protectorate/whatever.

> Russia astroturfed an independence movement in Ukraine as a pretext to break off a chunk of it for themselves.

That's true, but one should note that that only worked because of a large local Russia-sympathetic population.

Otherwise, it would have worked out more like when they tried to inflame California separatism in 2016-2017.

I think most of the people in that region would accept any solution as long as peace will be maintained...

This kind of a very short-term thinking is what brought us here. In the recent history: look at how "effortless" the Crimea invasion was for them and what they did a few months later. They will certainly use this chance to bring even more military there and no one around will be more safe than they are now. Would you call it a "peace"?