White House on Sunday (local time) said that Russian President Vladimir Putin's move to place the country's nuclear deterrent forces on a "special" alert shows the pattern of unwarranted escalation and "manufactured threats" from the Kremlin, reported local media.
"This is really a pattern that we've seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don't exist in order to justify further aggression -- and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism," CNN News quoted White House press secretary Jen Psaki during her conversation with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week".
Terming Putin's move as a totally unnecessary step, another senior administration official said that Putin was never under threat from Ukraine or NATO.
"The only reason his forces face a threat today is that they invaded a sovereign country, and one without nuclear weapons," the media outlet quoted him as saying.
This comes as Putin placed Russia's nuclear deterrent forces on a "special" alert on Sunday amid the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
"Western countries are not only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic area... I'm speaking about the illegitimate sanctions that everyone is well aware of. However, the top officials of the leading NATO countries also make aggressive statements against our country as well," RT News quoted him as saying.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has agreed to meet with a Russian delegation in Belarus, and Russians are heading to the place where the talks will be held, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said on Sunday.
( With inputs from ANI )
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