Foreign Affairs committee  I should start by saying that this year the Russian economy suffered a sharp decline, 3.7% of the GDP. That's a lot. This year, 2017, by western and Russian predictions, the Russian economy will be back to about 1% of economic growth. It's not much, but still, it's an improvement

Foreign Affairs committee  Sam, Piotr Dutkiewicz here. Be a nice guy today.

Foreign Affairs committee  I agree. The threat of escalation is definitely there. Russia will be responding to anything they perceive as a threat. They perceive a lot of friendship things as threats these days. It is becoming an unpredictable spiral that may end up with a much worse situation than we are i

Foreign Affairs committee  Russian troops will not be in Warsaw or in Lithuania. That is nonsense, but I agree that there is a fear and this fear somehow has to be contained. We don't like to have lies. They are fearful and, therefore, unpredictable. Most recently, the chair of one of the Polish dominant

Foreign Affairs committee  You're absolutely right. You're talking about Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. With the exception of Finland, all of them are former members of the Bloc. They have fears. They have challenges, but also their fears are grossly exaggerated. They are exaggerated. If you ask

Foreign Affairs committee  For them NATO is the solution. We want to have NATO because NATO will save us from Russia. Be realistic: there are a couple of hundred NATO soldiers. There is no way that the soldiers are a counterweight to the Russian weight, but in the Polish or the Lithuanian mentality it's a

Foreign Affairs committee  I would agree with all that Ambassador Westdal said. I have a few comments. First, at this moment Russia-U.S. relations are at the very, very low end. I had the chance to personally ask President Putin about this in October, and he said that this is the lowest level of trust bet

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. It is an honour to be here. I would like start by saying that, first of all, the challenge is to understand where the other country is coming from. I spent more than 30 years working in and with Russia. I am not Russian—I'm Polish by origin—but I will try t