I have always defended my convictions and what I believed to be the truth.

I'm not an ordinary prisoner.

I have always defended my convictions and what I believed to be the truth.

My father was a construction engineer, and my mother was a production engineer.

People take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia.

Every politician deep inside is authoritarian. If the person doesn't have ambition, that's not a politician. Society needs to put every ambitious, every effective politician into such a position that it helps - that this person helps improve society. That's why I'm always talking about need to change the system rather than should we go with Navalny or Gudkov or Yavlinsky or Khodorkovsky. We all have our ambitions. We're all ambitious people.

I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.