WASHINGTON, March 11 -- More than two-thirds of Americans are paying close attention to Russia's involvement in the situation in Crimea of Ukraine, a Gallup poll released Tuesday showed.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans say they are following the news about Ukraine's crisis "very or somewhat closely", according to the March 6-9 poll.

Americans' attention to the Ukraine's crisis is on par with the attention paid to such events as the crisis in Egypt in February 2011 (69 percent) and Libya's crisis in March 2011 (71 percent), but below attention to the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden (83 percent) or the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (87 percent), Gallup said.

By comparison, the events in Gallup's database that garnered the highest levels of attention were the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the destruction by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the beginning of the war with Iraq in 2003, all of which at least 95 percent of Americans were following closely, Gallup noted.

Meanwhile, the poll found 66 percent of Americans are worried that Ukraine's crisis would develop into a larger regional conflict that could lead to the U.S. military getting involved.

The poll was released one day ahead of the visit to Washington by Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday.