Today our group assembled in Tribble Hall for a teleconference with a state department official who was an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe. To do this, we sat in seats in a particular auditorium, with microphones on the desks and our counterpart in Washington, projected live onto a screen in the front of the room. He answered all our questions about a whole range of topics, from Kosovo to the cold war to skinheads on the streets of Saint Petersburg. We had been briefed beforehand to ask many follow-up questions, and we did this, pressing further on each subject. The official was impeccably familiar with every subject we brought up, and acknowledged problems in the US-Russia relationship, and detailed the plans that the State Department and the Administration have drawn up to find solutions to each one. The United States, he said, had an interest in encouraging democracy and respect for human rights in Russia, and was (like the rest of the world) shocked when Anna Politkovskaya was murdered for her independent and vocal journalism. Democracy creates stability and prosperity, and an independent middle class that is developing in the Russian Federation would both create democracy and flourish in it – thus, democracy would reinforce itself. Meanwhile, the State Department foresees no cold war-like conflict with Russia, and cooperates with Russia on many issues, such as counter-terror activities. However, he did not seem to have confidence that Russia would accept any Western-backed solution to the Kosovo issue. He also said that the missile defence system, construction of which sparked a bitter Russo-Western controversy this spring in Poland and the Czech Republic, was not directed against Russia, but he offered no explanation as to its real purpose. Perhaps he would have, but the time ran out before we depleted our questions.