Two bipartisan Congressional delegations visited frontline countries bordering on Ukraine this week: a ten-person group of Senators who spent the weekend in Poland and Germany and a six-member House mission that returns today from a weeklong trip to Poland, Romania, Moldova and Austria. Both of Maine’s senators, Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) were there along with one of this state’s two House members, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME01), who was in Moldova yesterday.
What did they see? What did they learn? I spoke to all three Maine members in recent days, including an interview last night with Pingree from Moldova, the country I think would be Putin’s next target were he to wish to strike behind Ukraine. (It’s low-hanging fruit: a former Soviet republic of just 2.6 million that’s not in NATO and is located adjacent to Odessa and has a Russia-backed separatist statelet within its territory. You can read about the two delegations’ experiences in Poland in the Portland Press Herald here and Pingree’s in Romania and Moldova here. (She and the House delegation met with Moldova’s Prime Minister and Interior Minister while there, who are asking for U.S. help.)
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.