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Russia has made a series of demands of the West, including scaling back the NATO military presence in Eastern Europe to 1990s levels and guaranteeing that Ukraine could never join NATO. (Mr. Putin has long been vehemently opposed to Ukraine, a former pillar of the Soviet Union, joining NATO, a position he last made forcefully clear when Russian forces reclaimed Crimea in 2014.) The United States has called those demands “non-starters’’ and instead offered a series of proposals aimed at arms control.

“What I do know about Putin is he likes uncertainty,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia. “He has leveraged that in the past for advantage. He is forcing Biden’s hand and everybody else’s.”

Next week, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is scheduled to visit Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv and Moscow, fresh from a visit to Washington where he and Mr. Biden promised a “united” front on shutting down Nord Stream 2, a lucrative Germany-to-Russia gas pipeline project, should Russia invade Ukraine.

Russia’s foreign ministry dismissed American talk of war as mere propaganda.

“A coordinated information attack is being conducted against Moscow,” the ministry said in a statement, along with a list of previous Western warnings of a possible imminent invasion. That messaging, it said, is “aimed at undermining and discrediting Russia’s fair demands for security guarantees, as well as at justifying Western geopolitical aspirations and military absorption of Ukraine’s territory.”

Maria Zakharova, the ministry spokeswoman, wrote on the Telegram app: “The White House’s hysteria is as revealing as ever. The Anglo-Saxons need war. At any price.”

Mr. Sullivan disagreed with the idea that informing Americans of Russia’s military capabilities was the same as calling for a war. “We are trying to stop a war. Prevent war. To avert a war,” he told reporters.

American officials have warned of a grim toll if Mr. Putin proceeds with a military invasion of Ukraine, including the potential deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 civilians, 5,000 to 25,000 members of the Ukrainian military and 3,000 to 10,000 members of the Russian military. Mr. Sullivan said on Friday that officials believed that an attack would likely start with missile and aerial attacks, and continue with a ground invasion.