We are expanding and improving the infrastructure of our relations. You must have heard about China's plans to participate in building a high-speed railway line between Moscow and Kazan in the Volga region, in central Russia. And then we plan to extend it to Kazakhstan and on to China.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism.

I assure you that interest in Japanese culture in Russia is just as strong as interest in Russian culture in Japan.

I believe that a country, Russia in this case, which can defend the honour and dignity of its citizens, protect their lives, and fulfill its international legal commitments under the peacekeeping mandate, will not find itself in isolation, no matter what our partners in Europe or the United States may think, expressing their bloc mentality.

I am in regular contact with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe. We have met several times this year [2016].

I believe it is no secret that I like Japan very much - Japanese culture, sport, including judo, but it will not offend anyone if I say that I like Russia even more.