Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today in Geneva in hopes of securing a “diplomatic off-ramp” to the Ukraine crisis.

Before the meeting Antony Blinken during a visit to Berlin said that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008.

“All the former Soviet socialist republics became sovereign nations in 1990 and 1991. One of them is Georgia. Russia invaded it in 2008. Thirteen years later, nearly 300,000 Georgians are still displaced from their homes. Another is Moldova. Russia maintains troops and munitions there against the will of its people. If Russia invades and occupies Ukraine, what’s next? Certainly, Russia’s efforts to turn its neighbors into puppet states, to control their activities, to crack down on any spark of democratic expression will intensify. Once the principles of sovereignty and self-determination are thrown out, you revert to a world in which the rules we shaped together over decades erode and then vanish”, he said.