We have very close humanitarian contacts [with China], wide-ranging youth exchanges, educational and regional contacts, and all of them continue to develop.

Europe and the United States are not the whole world.

We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

If we do it, if we work to achieve all this [cultural exchange with Japan], we can and should talk about joint efforts toward ensuring international security, and not only in the Far East.

I trust Angela Merkel, she is a very open person. She is also subject to certain constraints and limitations. But she is honestly trying to settle the crisis, also in the south-east of Ukraine. However, what the European Union is doing with those sanctions is nothing but a theatre of the absurd.

They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle 'If you are not with us, you are against us.' To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organizations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker's family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.