U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, says she supports how President Joe Biden, a Democrat, is handling the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In an interview with Spectrum News Maine, Collins said she had reservations about the Biden administration’s initial approach to the crisis, but she is now on board with the response.

“The Biden administration is now pulling out all of the stops to try to dissuade the Russians from invading a sovereign democracy. Ukraine has been our partner and deserves our support," Collins said. "Initially, I thought that the Biden administration was a bit slow off the mark and I still believe that some sanctions could have been imposed, on the Russians, for its cyber attacks on the country of Ukraine.

“Nevertheless, right now, the most important thing we can do is to send a unified signal to the Russians, from America, from our NATO allies and from countries in eastern Europe, in particular, that the Russians need to withdraw the more than 100,000 troops that they have amassed on three sides of Ukraine.”

While Moscow claims it has no plans to attack Ukraine, the level of troop deployments to the region have raised alarms in Washington and other western capitals.

Collins told Spectrum News Maine that while Russian President Vladmir Putin may not publicly confirm what his plans are, Russia’s actions are a clear threat.

“For the Russians to deny that they aren’t making preparations for war is simply at odds with the facts on the ground… Russian troops have been amassed on the borders, more than 100,000 of them in a menacing way. They are well equipped. They have medical units with them and I'm very concerned that the Russians are on the verge of an invasion,” Collins said.

At the White House on Tuesday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “We have provided an enormous amount of security assistance to Ukraine to make sure they are prepared.  So, we are working on a number of paths…but diplomacy is always going to be the preferred path.”

Psaki noted that Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron had spoken “twice in the last week.” Biden also met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Monday.

Macron met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, in talks that lasted more than five hours, and then traveled to Ukraine on Tuesday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“I would just say we’re encouraged by any efforts at diplomacy. We can’t — we still don’t have any prediction of what President Putin will do. We can’t control what Russia will do next,” Psaki said. 

Maine’s other senator, Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who met earlier this month with ambassadors from eastern European NATO countries to reaffirm America’s resolve against Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has reportedly demanded guarantees from the West that NATO will not accept Ukraine and other former Soviet nations as members, halt weapon deployments there and roll back its forces from eastern Europe.

These demands have been rejected as non-starters by the U.S. and NATO.

Collins said she, too, “can’t predict” what Putin will do next, but she did seem encouraged that the situation could be handled peacefully.

“I hope that we can dissuade the Russians from going forward with the threat of huge sanctions that would affect Vladimir Putin himself, as well as the Russian banking system and its energy sector," Collins said.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter tug-of-war since 2014, when, following the ouster of Ukraine's Kremlin-friendly president, Moscow annexed the Crimean region of Ukraine and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the east of the country. The fighting between Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces in the east has since killed over 14,000 people.

(AP Reporting contributed to this article)