US Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans discuss the Ukraine crisis with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov next week, the State Department said,news agency MIA informs.

The Russians had accepted Blinken‘s offer of talks in Europe and proposed dates for the end of next week, which the US government accepted “provided there is no further Russian invasion of Ukraine,” spokesman Ned Price announced late Thursday.

“If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy.” The West is concerned that the massive Russian troop deployment in the border area with Ukraine could be in preparation for war.

Russia rejects the allegation. Russia’s Defence Ministry said for a third day in a row on Friday that it was withdrawing troops after the end of manoeuvres in the region, although Washington and NATO have cast doubt that soldiers are actually returning to their barracks.

Soldiers and military equipment have been moved from the border back to the Nizhny Novgorod region about 400 kilometres east of Moscow, the ministry said in Moscow on Friday.

It released a photo and video of tanks on railway carriages. The exact location was not named. In addition, other tank units had been moved from an exercise on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, to the republics of Dagestan and Chechnya in the North Caucasus, the ministry said.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin had accused Moscow on Thursday of continuing to increase troops and equipment and moving even closer to the border with Ukraine. NATO also saw no signs of a withdrawal. The Kremlin argued in response that the withdrawal of troops would not happen overnight.