Putin is very much afraid of leaving. Because he is formally right now in his first term, so has another eight years from now. Legally, he has created all the mechanisms for himself. He's a lawyer.

I think that we are right now - the society - is living in the Facebook era and the political system is still in the 19th century prior to the Industrial era. Why for God's sake do you need to be socially liberal and economically conservative? Or to be economically market-oriented but at the same time socially, extremely conservative? Why can't you be free in both dimensions?

We need to convince him that if he makes the decision to go, that we are ready to trade his personal security for peaceful resignation. That's very important because we're all afraid that he will stick to power to his deathbed and just kill a lot of people along the way. If he is willing to go, we shall buy him an island in the Caribbean or in the Pacific Ocean with nice girls - like a separate country for him.

Some politicians are scared of Putin and some are extremely apologetic, actually. And I feel very sorry for this because some people who are like my friends from the left flank, they praise Putin because they see him as the fighter against American imperialism, which he is not. You know, why would you select between American imperialism and Russian imperialism? To my mind, it's exactly the same thing.

Putin is just maneuvering. He wants to be respected. He wants to be an important player in global politics. He wants people to negotiate with him and he wants to have the trade-offs here and there and spheres of influence. He's very much a person of the 20th century in the global and geopolitical space.

In the world of today, I think that entrepreneurs are the new emerging ruling class - I identify it as the startup class. That's the new proletariat of the 21st century. These are the people that are the drivers of the change.

Generally, Putin thinks of himself as Christian. I don't think he is, but he pretends to think that he is. In terms of his ideology he's more like Bush Jr. But he's less ideological. He's thinking more, 'How to stay in power?'