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?
Ilya PonomarevWe 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.
Ilya PonomarevPutin 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.
Ilya PonomarevRussia can fall apart. It's not because of the oil prices ... It's because what sticks a country together is a common interest of people. It has to be economically and socially profitable - beneficial - for people to be together. They should understand how they benefit from a large country. And if they start to feel like a large country is a source of problem, then the country collapses as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Ilya PonomarevFrom the point of view of legislation of the Constitution, my mandate has been given by my constituency. So it's only my constituency that can revoke my mandate. So until the next election, nobody is supposed to do anything.
Ilya PonomarevI 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.
Ilya PonomarevMy political tradition is on the left, but I think that more modern leftists, they sometimes get stuck with this vision of large government and social benefits and everything and that's against what is my position, because I think that the ultimate vision of Marx, Engels, and those people was to eliminate government entities and to give as much power to the people. And in modern standing that means direct democracy, that means all the power to the communities, it means gradually eliminating all government oppression on the society. And 100 years ago, leftists' major allies were labor unions.
Ilya Ponomarev