Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

A championship contender in the early twentieth century needed charisma and a knack for cultivating sponsorship, and Rubinstein was the epitome of the shy and unsocial chess player. Now matter how great his chess skills, he lacked the people skills to be a self-promoter and fund-raiser.

Furthermore, the situation in the North Caucasus is rather unstable. Mutual relations and the cooperation between [Vladimir] Putin and [Ramzan] Kadyrov, the high price that has been paid to buy the loyalty of the local elite through an enormous tribute of multibillion[-ruble] investments, all this cannot be an arrangement for good.

The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.

I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.

I'm not trying to give any definite answer. What I'm trying to prove is that we have enough gaps, enough discrepancies, enough simple falsifications to conclude that probably this history was an invention of a later time.

...comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.