The USS Truxtun, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, will carry out more exercises with allied ships in the Black Sea, its commander said Saturday, the latest Western response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Commander Andrew Biehn was briefing reporters aboard the 300-crew destroyer as it lay docked in the Bulgarian port of Varna.
The USS Truxtun last week took part in drills with Romanian and Bulgarian ships a few hundred miles from the Russian forces that entered Ukraine's Russian-majority territory of Crimea after mass protests toppled Ukraine's pro-Moscow president.
The U.S. said the exercises were routine and had been planned long before the crisis erupted. But they coincided with air drills carried out by U.S. and Polish fighter jets in Poland and NATO reconnaissance flights over Eastern Europe.
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