NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our own backyard; in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round.

However, given the fact that the State has a controlling stake in the company [Rosneft], it might not be the best course of action when one company under State control buys another one fully owned by the State. This is one point.

The United Nations' founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America's consent, the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

It was at a certain stage (you might have forgotten, haven't you?) that the United States actively collaborated with Saddam when he was at war with Iran: weapons were supplied, diplomatic and political support was provided and so on. Then the US fell out with him for some reason and decided to do away with him.

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.

We have a contract for the delivery of the S-300s. We have supplied some of the components, but the delivery hasn't been completed. We have suspended it for now. But if we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world.

We handed over nothing, those territories [Tarabarov Island to China] were disputed and we have been negotiating this issue with the People's Republic of China, let me stress that, for 40 years, and finally managed to come to an agreement. One part of the territory was assigned to Russia, while another part - to the People's Republic of China.