Part of the people here are interested in the same thing that Putin is interested in: Putin wants to have America as an enemy. Part of Americans want to have Russia as an enemy. It's advantageous. The other part of the people are just ordinary people. And these people project onto big objects the kind of relations that they have with small objects in their everyday lives.

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.

Putin has an obvious problem. His country's economy is in stagnation. He needs to constantly be pointing a figure at who is at fault. America is at fault. He needs to show those fronts - those directions in which he is defeating America. In Syria, for example, in Syria, he is defeating America; not ISIS, he's defeating America.

Russian people really don't like it when somebody does horrible things in Russia, and then can calmly go travel to another country and spend time there. And this is what needs to be done: the Russian people need to be told this, because in today's world, just doing something is not enough. You've got to tell about it, too. If you've done something and haven't told about it, it's as good as if you hadn't done it at all.

I established my bank in 1988.

Putin doesn't need Donbass (east Ukraine). He wants to determine the fate of the world at talks with a U.S. President, putin is dreaming of getting a deal with the United States about a new-old order for the world, when the world is split on zone of influence. When you cannot interfere in someone else's zone. Not even to mention internal politics.

The right to private property meant at the same time the right and duty to be personally concerned about your own well-being, to be personally concerned about your family's income, to be personally concerned about your future. This is hard work.