We believe we have no territorial problems at all. It is only Japan that believes it has territorial problems with Russia. We are ready to talk about this.

Our foreign ministries will simply need to sort out some purely technical matters. I see no political restraints here. The same applies to economic matters. We, on our part, are ready. However, let me repeat once again, given that Japan has joined the anti-Russian sanctions, how ready is Japan and how can it do that without breaching its commitments to its allies? We do not know the answer. Only Japan itself knows the answer.

Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

But if the U.S. were to leave now and abandon Iraq without establishing the grounds for a united country, that would definitely be a second mistake.

The fact is that there was a long war in which Serbia and its capital Belgrade were bombarded and attacked with missiles. It was a military intervention of the West and NATO against the then rump Yugoslavia.

The absence of a peace treaty [with Japan] is an anachronism we inherited from the past and it must be removed. However, how to do this is a complicated issue.