Our economy has become completely different, on the whole. The size has changed. The economy has almost doubled in size. And the quality is changing, not as fast as we would like it to, but the structure is changing. Our Armed Forces are completely different today from what they were, say 15 years ago or so. All of this, including our great history, great culture, all of this, not just what we see today, is what makes the vast majority of Russia's citizens feel proud for their country.

Even with the help of anti-Russian propaganda in the mass media, Germany has not succeeded in damaging this sympathy.

25 million of Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation. They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. Then the Soviet Union suddenly fell apart, in fact, overnight, and it turned out that in the former Soviet Union republics there were 25 million Russians. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came out?

Contractors always pursue large profit, the customer - a high-quality end product in due time and at a lower cost. This struggle never ends, but this is natural.

I wish that in the course of my visit to places the Prime Minister [Shindzo Abe] calls home, all of a sudden, we would reach a clear understanding on how we can resolve the matters. We will be very glad if that happens. Are there any chances? Perhaps.

In Russia all people enjoy the equal rights, including homosexuals.

There are also other areas. For example, culture. This is extremely important. We keep revisiting sport, judo, because I practice it, but other than that, there is also culture. Every year events that are in some way or other related to Russia take place in Japan.