A child drags a toy truck past pro-Russian soldiers standing outside an Ukrainian military base in Perevalne, Crimea, Thursday. With thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors trapped on military bases, surrounded by heavily armed Russian forces and pro-Russia militia, the Kiev government said it was drawing up plans to evacuate its outnumbered troops from Crimea back to the mainland and would seek U.N. support to turn the peninsula into a demilitarized zone.

Mandy Peace embraces her dog Jethro outside a two-alarm apartment fire in Atlanta. Peace had firefighters kick in her door to rescue her dogs from her apartment after she arrived home from work to find the building on fire. There are no apparent injuries from the fire that forced the building to be evacuated.

Protesting civil servants confront riot police outside the private office of Greek Public Administration Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in central Athens. Scores of striking schoolteachers and other civil servants occupied Mitsotakis' office Thursday to protest planned public sector layoffs, under cost-cutting reforms demanded by the debt-mired country's bailout creditors.

All of this is shown in Today in Pictures.

Today in Pictures is a daily collection of handpicked photos selected by AL.com photographers from the hundreds of Associated Press images of the day.