One thing is clear, everyone, no matter what their professional or material status, no matter what their influence on various state structures, must obey the law.

We have created stability, which is a necessary condition for development. But I can't call this system authoritarian.

I'll be honest, I felt an urge to squeeze him like a kitten and that led to the gesture I made. There was nothing behind it really.

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.

It is well known, widely known that the US President-elect [Donald Trump] has publicly spoken in favour of normalising Russian-American relations. We cannot but support this. Of course, we understand that it will not be an easy job, taking into account the degree to which Russian-American relations have degraded. But we are ready to cover our part of the way.

The US wants to subdue Russia, to solve US problems at Russia's expense. No one in history ever managed to do this to Russia, and no one ever will.

We had a very good situation in 2005. The common budget had a volume of 80 billion dollars per year. Thousands of jobs were created in Germany by Russian investments. At the same time, a large number of German companies invested in Russia. There were countless cultural and social contacts.