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.

Frankly speaking, I could never even imagine that such information would be of interest to the American public or that the campaign headquarters of one of the candidates - in this case, Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton - apparently worked for her, rather than for all the Democratic Party candidates in an equal manner. I could never assume that anybody would find it interesting.

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

If European countries want to cater to U.S. foreign policy interests, I don't think that they stand to gain anything.

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

I think that all countries of the region should join their efforts in the fight against a common threat - terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. It concerns Iran as well, it concerns Saudi Arabia (although the two countries do not get along very well, ISIS threatens both of them), it concerns Jordan, it concerns Turkey (in spite of certain problems regarding the Kurdish issue), and, in my opinion, everybody is interested in resolving the situation. Our task is to join these efforts to fight against a common enemy.

Just take Kosovo: back then, UN bodies decided that Kosovo should become independent of Serbia and that the interests of Serbia's central government had to be subordinated. You can read that in all the records, also in the German ones.