Europe
Destroyer Truxtun leaves Black Sea after maneuvers with NATO navies
Stars and Stripes
March 21, 2014
The guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun departs Naval Station Norfolk for a scheduled deployment. Truxtun is heading for the Black Sea for exercises with allied navies amid heightened tensions with Russia over Ukraine. (Sabrina Fine/U.S. Navy)
The guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun departed the Black Sea on Friday following exercises with allied navies.
The warship entered the Black Sea on March 7 amid heightened tensions in Ukraine, where Russian troops invaded Crimea before annexing the region earlier this week. The Truxtun held exercises twice with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies, practicing basic maneuvers and drills.
The Navy said the visit was planned long before events in Ukraine. Yet it coincided with other Pentagon moves to reassure allies in the region, such as expanded F-15C fighter jet patrols over the Baltic states and the dispatch of F-16 fighter jets and pilots to Poland.
The Truxtun is part of the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, which is on an eight-month deployment to Europe and the Middle East. The group, which counts roughly 6,000 sailors, four ships and an air wing, departed the Mediterranean for the Middle East earlier this week.