It is only up to the Syrian people living in Syria to determine who, how and based on what principles should rule their country, and any external advice would be absolutely inappropriate, harmful and against international law.

Yet our interests, the interests of the Russian Federation, include the normalisation of relations with Japan, which is not at the bottom of the agenda. The whole range of what will be proposed for a solution, the entire range of matters related to the normalisation of our relations and what that would bring after normalisation, this is the whole range of issues to be discussed and decided, and those decisions should be of a practical nature.

Then, the specialists themselves, probably believe that in the course of EU expansion, for example, some elements concerning the readiness of some economies to enter the Eurozone have not been taken into account.

Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be...

The stability of the rate is the main issue and the Central Bank manages to ensure it one way or another. This was finally achieved after the Central Bank switched to a floating national currency exchange rate.

There are many other areas. And I am confident that each of them is of interest to both the people of the United States of America and the Russian people.

If one looks at the map of the world, it's difficult to find Iraq, and one would think it rather easy to subdue such a small country.