The breakup of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained.

At least Germany and France have recently criticized that the Ukrainian central government has limited certain parts of the autonomy regulations to three years. They were supposed to last permanently.

It is a fact that the US defence budget is larger than the defence budgets of all other countries taken together. This is why I understand the US President when he says that his NATO allies should take over part of this burden. It is a pragmatic and understandable approach.

Nuclear weapons and other weapons are the means to protect our sovereignty and legitimate interests, not the means to behave aggressively or to fulfil some non-existent imperial ambitions.

If there were any in China and Russia in this connection, though we both made some compromises. But these were compromises between friendly countries. I think it is almost impossible to achieve such compromise in other ways.

I do not exclude this, but I would like to draw your attention to one absolutely key aspect: In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council can sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state is inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.

Boris Nemtsov, left his mark on the history of Russia, in politics and public life. He worked on important positions in the difficult transition period for our country. He always openly and honestly stated his position, defended his point of view.