Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

Top cybersecurity officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have warned of potential attacks on American cyber infrastructure in concert with a physical invasion of Ukraine, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source told ABC News that the warning came Monday on a call with state and local officials -- but it's not new. On Friday, the Homeland Security Department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) explicitly warned of Russian cyberattacks and made a veiled mention of the ongoing geopolitical climate.

"The Russian government has used cyber as a key component of their force projection over the last decade, including previously in Ukraine in the 2015 timeframe," CISA said in an online post. "The Russian government understands that disabling or destroying critical infrastructure—including power and communications—can augment pressure on a country’s government, military and population and accelerate their acceding to Russian objectives."

U.S. officials have said a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen "at any time" and that they believe Ukraine could also be a target of an offensive cyberattack. Ukraine has already been the target of what some Ukrainian officials believed was a Russian cyberattack earlier this year, when suspected Russian hackers defaced Ukrainian government websites.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been warning in bulletins as early as January that there could be a cyberattack tied to a possible Russian invasion.

-ABC News' Luke Barr

Russia's parliament voted for a law on Tuesday that calls on President Vladimir Putin to recognize two Russian-controlled breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent.

The measure is a formal appeal to Putin to recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, in an area of southeastern Ukraine known as the Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists forces have been battling the Ukrainian army since 2014.

Such recognition would open a path for Russia to formally annex the two regions as it did the Crimean Peninsula almost eight years ago. It's now up to Putin to decide whether to go through with it.

Two bills were initially put forward for a vote in Russia's parliament -- one by the Communist Party and the other by Putin's ruling United Russia. The first would have the request sent to the president immediately, while the second would have sought consultations with the foreign ministry and other government agencies before appealing directly to Putin. Ultimately, parliament voted for the first bill.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office called the vote an "escalatory action." Ukraine’s foreign ministry has warned that it will consider Russia recognizing the separatist regions as a withdrawal from the Minsk peace agreement reached in 2015, which was supposed to end the conflict in Donbas that broke out a year earlier.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba reacted to Russia's announcement Tuesday that it is withdrawing some troops from the border, saying his country will "believe it when we see it."

"There are constantly various statements coming from the Russian Federation, so we have a rule: we’ll believe it when we see it," Kuleba said during a televised briefing Tuesday. "When we see the withdrawal, we’ll believe in de-escalation."

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

Some Russian troops positioned near the border with Ukraine will begin returning to their bases Tuesday after completing "exercises," according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The units set to return are from Russia's Southern and Western Military Districts, the defense ministry said Tuesday. But there are troops from other military districts massed on the border. Still, if some troops do pull back, it would potentially be a key signal that the crisis with Ukraine will not escalate.

Russian state media then released video purportedly showing tank troops loading up in neighboring Belarus to return home as well as tanks in southwestern Russia moving back. A spokesperson for Russia's Southern Military District told state media Tuesday that some personnel have begun leaving Crimea for their permanent bases following the completion of drills. In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and established two federal subjects there, the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. But the international community still recognizes the territories as being part of Ukraine.

Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that the military exercises would end "in the near future." There are still drills being conducted in neighboring Belarus as well as the Black Sea that are due to end Feb. 20.

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a post on her official Facebook page on Tuesday that Feb. 15 "will go down in history as the day the Western propoganda war failed."

"Disgraced and destroyed without a single shot fired," Zakharova added. 

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell