Russia said it was continuing to pull troops back from near Ukraine, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO said they had seen no indication of a withdrawal.

Still, Western officials were cautiously hopeful for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, dismissed NATO’s assessment on troop levels, saying that the alliance had not made “a sober evaluation” of the situation.

CNN's Conor Powell reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.