*Russian troops took control of vital installations across the Crimean Peninsula on Saturday, and Russian President Vladimir Putin secured authorization to send in more as the Kremlin set the stage for a high-stakes international showdown over the future of Ukraine. On Sunday, Ukraine’s leader urged Putin to pull back his military, saying “we are on the brink of disaster,” according to the Associated Press. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s new prime minister, spoke after a closed session of his new parliament in Kiev. On Saturday, the interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, said, “We consider the behavior of the Russian Federation to be direct aggression against the sovereignty of Ukraine.” Hours later, President Obama, who had warned Putin on Friday against military intervention in Crimea, had an apparently tense 90-minute telephone exchange with the Russian president…* Did George Bush set a terrible precedent with this pre-emptive war with Iraq? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Kathy Lally, William Booth and Will Englund / The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-deeply-concerned-obama-warns-russia-against-action-in-crimea/2014/03/01/c56ca34c-a111-11e3-a050-dc3322a94fa7_story.html