The Baltic republics have invented something totally new. Do you know what? They use the word 'non-citizens' for people who have been living for decades in the territory of Baltic states and have been deprived of a number of political rights. They cannot participate in the election campaigns; they have limited political and social rights. Everybody keeps quiet about it, as if this is the way it should be. Of course, this cannot but cause a certain reaction.

I insist that people - wherever they live - have their rights and they must be able to fight for them.

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.

Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.

A very interesting and promising cluster has formed here [in the Russian Far East ], and we would be happy if our potential investors, our counterparts from abroad, first of all those from the Asia-Pacific region, knew more about it.

The Chechnya problem is a centuries-old problem. The thing is that today, fundamentalists and terrorists are exploiting those centuries-old problems to accomplish their own objectives that have nothing to do whatsoever with the interests of Chechnya.