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?

I think that there are excesses that exist in all societies. I won't say it's normal to have them, but it's natural to have them. I'm watching very closely ... what Snowden has done. I don't know him personally. I wanted to talk to him, but all of the security people didn't allow me to. But I think that he took the wrong approach to a very right thing which he was doing. Just the implementation was wrong. There was a clear platform to what he was doing, although of course that there were some mistakes made.

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?

Putin is not a strategist at all. He has brilliant tactics, but he is a very bad strategist overall. And I think he is acting very opportunistically there, just to play the cards with America. He was very proud of himself when he convinced us to give up on chemical weapons so that it could be played down and prevent an invasion, and that was very helpful for Obama because Obama saved his face and didn't order airstrikes at that very moment. Putin was extremely proud. That's the kind of thing Putin does.

I think that it's inevitable if society will be run by old-timers who are still in the paradigm of the past, so I think the real way to resolve this is if the entrepreneurs go into politics and gradually take over and push for their agenda.

I have a group of very loyal people. We are in the minority very much, basically 10 to 15% of the population that supports what we do. It's temporary. I think that the high numbers for Putin, they will pass as soon as economic tensions mount. And then the whole situation will be flipped. It's important not to alienate people, not to receive negative reaction on yourself, but we have to wait a little bit. Bolsheviks in 1914 were a dying sect, the only ones against the war, but just two and a half years later, they came to power.

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.