White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday accused Sen. Josh Hawley of repeating Russian talking points after the Missouri Republican wrote a letter questioning the Biden administration’s openness to admitting Ukraine to NATO.

Russia, which has amassed 100,000 troops along the Ukraine border, has demanded that NATO members commit to not including Ukraine in any future expansion. The U.S. has pushed back against those demands. 

In 2008, former President George W. Bush and other NATO leaders agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of the alliance, although no specific plans were ever put in place.

In a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Hawley asked for clarity on the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership. Hawley acknowledged that the United States has an interest in Ukraine maintaining its independence, but added, “Our interest is not so strong, however, as to justify committing the United States to go to war with Russia over Ukraine’s fate.”

Hawley argued that the U.S. should be more focused instead on preventing China from expanding its dominance in the Ind0-Pacific. 

“Americans’ security and prosperity rest upon our ability to keep that from happening, and so the United States must shift resources to the Indo-Pacific to deny China’s bid for regional domination,” Hawley wrote. “This means the United States can no longer carry the heavy burden it once did in other regions of the world – including Europe.”

Axios was the first to report on the letter.

Asked about Hawley’s remarks Wednesday, Psaki said: “If you are just digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with longstanding, bipartisan American values, which is to stand up for the sovereignty of countries like Ukraine, but others, their right to choose their own alliances, and also to stand against, very clearly, the efforts or attempts or potential attempts by any country to invade and take territory of another country,” Psaki said. 

“That applies to Sen. Hawley, but it also applies to others who may be parroting the talking points of Russian propagandists, leaders.”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is another conservative voice who has questioned Ukraine’s relevance to U.S. national security, although most congressional Republicans publicly support the Biden administration taking a strong stand against Russia. 

Hawley responded to Psaki’s remarks on Twitter, writing: “This from an Administration that has coddled Russia from Day One and now brought Europe to the brink of war - giving the Russians Nord Stream 2, refusing Ukraine military aid last year, and conducting a disastrous evacuation of Afghanistan that emboldened our enemies worldwide.”

The Biden administration announced Wednesday it is sending about 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland and Germany this week and sending part of an infantry Stryker squadron of roughly 1,000 troops based in Germany to Romania.

President Joe Biden has insisted the troops will not be sent to Ukraine for combat purposes, but are instead being deployed to reinforce security of NATO allies in eastern Europe.