Photos from Czech Republic

Entering the Foreign Ministry with Senator Levin and Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Kohout:


Meeting with CSSD Party Chairman:


Meeting with Deputy Minister of Defense Martin Bartak at Czech Ministry of Defense:


With Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vondra:

Photos: Warsaw Ghetto Memorial

Blog update: Poland

A blog update from Senator Collins:
We arrived in Warsaw late last night via the Polish airline Lot, which I belatedly learned is a regional carrier for the infamous Russian airline, Aeroflot. Met by our ambassador, Victor Ashe, we received our first briefing on the way in from the airport. Among other facts, I learned that 65% of Jewish Americans have roots in Poland.

Today was a very full day, starting with a classified briefing early this morning in Warsaw and ending with our night flight to Prague.

At the Polish embassy, I met two Mainers: Linda White Szczedanska from my hometown of Caribou and Betsy Dorman Taylor from South Portland, proving once again that it really is a small world.

Perhaps the most interesting meeting today was with the Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, whose American wife, Anne Applebaum, writes a column for the Washington Post. During our discussion of missile defense, he told us of the importance that Poland attaches to having American troops on its soil, preferably through a Patriot air and missile defense system as opposed to the plan for ballistic missile defense interceptors targeted at Iran. Pointing out that this is the tenth anniversary of Poland's joining NATO, the Minister said that it is time for Poland to benefit more from its NATO membership. He reminded us that Poland was one of only three countries to respond to NATO's (and America's) request for more troops for Afghanistan. Since I knew that the Minister had written a book on Afghanistan, I pressed him on what NATO's goal should be and whether more troops really would make a difference. He felt that the Administration's new policy can succeed and that our goal should be "to prevent the bad guys from taking control again."

Another interesting conversation today was with a group of Poles who represented think tanks and other nongovernmental organizations. When we were discussing possible compromises on missile defense, one academic darkly warned that the Russians view compromise as a weakness, that their view was to have the other side cede a position and then give up some more.

Photos from Warsaw

At the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw with Betsy Dorman Taylor (right) from South Portland and Linda White Szczedanska from Caribou (left), who are stationed there:


With Deputy Head of Poland's National Security Bureau, Witold Waszczykowski:

Blog update: Leaving Russia

Blog update from Senator Collins in Russia:
A fascinating day of meetings with the Foreign Minister and his deputy for two hours (far longer than usual for a meeting of this sort), with the chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Duma (Russian Parliament,) and with a human rights activist who spent years in a Soviet prison and gave an impassioned speech on the lack of true political freedom in Russia. In addition, we spent considerable time with our ambassador, an impressive career diplomat.

I was struck again today by how much the Russians seem to want a better relationship with us, yet how much a sense of resentment and loss of power shapes their views. They are convinced that the proposed missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic are directed at them rather than Iran, even as they concede that our assessment of the growing Iranian missile capability was more accurate than theirs was.
After the meetings, we took a quick tour of Red Square with its famed onion-domed Orthodox Russian cathedral, St. Basil.

One other observation as I leave Russia: the air pollution and traffic in Moscow are truly horrendous, and people smoke everywhere or so it seems. The average Russian male lives to only age 59.

Photos from Russia

Meeting with human rights activist Sergei Kovalev :

Meeting at US Embassy with Ambassador John Beyrle:


With Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Beyrle:

Senator Collins: Blog update from Moscow

Senator Collins will be blogging during her fact-finding mission to Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic with Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

The American Ambassador hosted our Senate Delegation and four Russians for dinner tonight at the historic Spaso House, the ornate residence of American ambassadors since the establishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries in 1933.

The Russian guests included two foreign policy and security experts, a newspaper editor, and a nuclear physicist who is an expert on nonproliferation. This was our opportunity to talk with Russians who are not part of the government yet know a great deal about foreign and defense policy.

Although they personally seemed to be pro-American, they described a troubling surge of anti-Americanism which they blamed on a host of issues ranging from the proposed expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia to the American reaction favoring Georgia in the war with Russia to the Bush Administration's plan for ballistic missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic.

At the heart of this long list of grievances, however, seems to be Russia's resentment that it no longer has the special superpower relationship with the United States that it once had.