The U.S. guided-missile destroyer Truxtun is preparing for Black Sea military exercises with Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces. The ship departed from Greece early

Ukraine’s parliament began a procedure to dissolve the regional assembly in Crimea after it asked to join Russia, Ukraine’s interim president Oleksandr Turchynov said Thursday. 

Crimea’s Parliament voted to join Russia on March 6 and its Moscow-backed government set a referendum within 10 days on the decision in a dramatic escalation of the crisis over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula.