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.

I guess I can call myself a pragmatist with a conservative perspective. It would be hard for me to explain this, but I always take realities of today, lessons from the distant and recent past into consideration.

There is progress in the sense that the Prime Minister [Shinzō Abe] has proposed, outlined, as it were, directions for movement toward a peace treaty and the resolution of issues related to territorial problems. Now, what did he propose? He proposed promoting an environment of trust and cooperation. I believe it is even hard to imagine that it can be any different, that we can agree to sign the documents that we are talking about without trusting each other or without cooperation. That is simply impossible even to imagine.

There are complicated processes going on in society in the Crimea. There are problems of the Crimean Tatars, the Ukrainian population, the Russian population, the Slavic population in general, but this is Ukraine's domestic political problem.

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.

We have good joint projects in the helicopter and aircraft manufacturing industry. We are considering cooperation and are actively cooperating in space. There are good prospects there [with China].

The European Union's enlargement is part of the natural process of integration and globalisation that is underway in the world today.