White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to put Russia's deterrence forces, which includes nuclear arms, on high alert are part of a wider pattern of unprovoked escalation and "manufactured threats" from the Kremlin.

"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," Psaki told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."