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.

Of course one always has to follow international law. This was also the case in Crimea. According to the Charter of the United Nations, every people has the right to self-determination.

However, crisis in world trade is, among other things, the result of using political tools in competition or simply for achieving political objectives with the help of economic restrictions.

We discussed this very important issue yesterday over a beer.

However, given the fact that the State has a controlling stake in the company [Rosneft], it might not be the best course of action when one company under State control buys another one fully owned by the State. This is one point.

BP found itself in a difficult situation after the tragic events in the Gulf of Mexico. We did everything we could to support it. Britain is interested in this, isn't it? I think it is. The same is true of other areas.

We were also going to develop relations with the current administration [of Barack Obama], but somehow they did not work out well in key areas and, I believe, not through our fault. I will not list all the problems that emerged in the past few years.