The situation in Georgia is determined by the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While we must acknowledge the reforms initiated by Mikheil Saakashvili that drastically lowered the level of corruption and authoritarian structures in the Georgian state, under the above-mentioned circumstances, the ruling elite must keep a firm grip on the country.

Rhetoric matters, but at the end of the day policy matters more.

The real political life in Russia unfortunately is not in the parliament but on the streets and in the media.

The loss of my childhood was the price for becoming the youngest world champion in history. When you have to fight every day from a young age, your soul can be contaminated. I lost my childhood. I never really had it. Today I have to be careful not to become cruel, because I became a soldier too early.

It's interesting that the greatest minds of computer science, the founding fathers, like Alan Turing and Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, they all looked at chess as the ultimate test. So they thought, "Oh, if a machine can play chess, and beat strong players, set aside a world champion, that would be the sign of a dawn of the AI era." With all due respect, they were wrong.

Moscow is simply unwilling to recognize the right of self-determination of nations.

Dictators are not strategists in the way I normally use that term. All the dictator cares about is survival. That means constantly worrying about the tactical response, "What do I do today, tonight, tomorrow morning, to stay alive?" Vladimir Putin doesn't care what happens a year or five years from now. He just cares about staying in the game. That is all he needs to survive.