When you say politics, you conjure a whole bunch of associations: elections, campaigning, debates, fundraising. None of this exists in Russia! We are still fighting not for election victories but for having elections at all.

I say we should praise Donald Trump for existing and for winning, because it has woken people up. For many years, I have been trying to say to Europeans, and especially to Americans, that Vladimir Putin is a problem for the world. And they have swatted me away. "It's your problem, we have our democracy." Suddenly, because of Trump, they are learning about separation of powers, independence of the judiciary and that Ronald Reagan was right when he said, «Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction».

I'm not saying that George W. Bush did everything right. But even if you take a skeptical view of his Iraq war, [Barack] Obama made the more serious error of withdrawing his troops from Iraq early.

Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

I reckon that there won't be an intervention in the near future, because Georgia's military adventure revealed the weakness of the Russian army.

Vladimir Putin mainly has friends in Europe among the extreme right, such as Marine Le Pen's Front National in France.

I am between the Tories and the Lib Dems. I am fiscally conservative. I'm for strong foreign policy, but socially very liberal. I am not religious. That makes me feel uncomfortable with American Republicans. I don't feel at home anywhere, really. Labour under Tony Blair was not something I would associate myself with, but I didn't have a big problem with it. I have to make a choice between fiscal and the role of the state and social freedom.