We have a professional relationship [with Chancellor Angela Merkel].2016 is the year of the German-Russian youth exchange, so the relations are moving on.

The constitutional reform is supposed to give autonomy to eastern Ukraine and to be adopted by the end of 2015. This has not happened, and the year is over. That's not Russia's fault.

The democratic choice Russian people made in the early 90's is final.

Japan announced that it would not comply with this declaration [ 1956]. Later on, the Soviet Union also declared that the declaration could not be fulfilled unilaterally, by the USSR alone.

Russia is a very reliable and big market. I don't remember the figure but, for example, the German machine-building industry has been increasing its supplies to Russia every year. These supplies are huge. Does someone want to discontinue these supplies? We'll buy from somebody else.

The participants expressed anxiety about the problems the Defense Ministry had been meeting in realizing its plans for future development.

I would prefer to abandon the terminology of the past. 'Superpower' is something which we used during the cold war time. Why use it now?