She confirmed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kiev this week, just after it was recently revealed that CIA Director William Burns did the same last week. "What Secretary Blinken is going to do is highlight very clearly that there's a diplomatic path forward," Psaki said. "It is the choice of President Putin and the Russians to make whether they are going to suffer severe economic consequences or not."

Crucially, Blinken will from there go to Geneva where he's agreed to meet Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. He's expected to demand that Russia "take immediate steps to de-escalate," according to Psaki's briefing.

Russia has lately confirmed it has a build-up of forces within its territory near Ukraine, but hasn't disclosed how many troops, after Kiev and Washington have commonly accused the Kremlin of having at least 100,000 troops there in preparation for a Ukraine invasion, something the Russians have vehemently and consistently denied.