We conducted talks on border issues with our friends in the People's Republic of China for 40 years. There were also issues related to specific territories.

Prime Minister [Shinzō Abe] and I have spoken a lot, and we said all the right things, in my opinion, about creating an atmosphere of trust and friendship between our nations and peoples.

We still have a great amount of work to do in social development, including resolving one of the biggest challenges we face in this area, namely, reducing the gap between high-income earners and people, citizens of our country, who are still living on very modest means indeed. But we cannot, of course, adopt the solution used 80 years ago and simply confiscate the riches of some to redistribute among others. We will use completely different means to resolve this problem, namely, we will ensure good economic growth.

Therefore, I do not think we should go only 60 years back but should look deeper, centuries back. Maybe this will give us [Russia and Japan] an opportunity to look at the future from a more remote perspective.

As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even one step ahead, who do not want to think and do not intend to honour their commitments.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia's good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

Russia, as well as any other country, does not need dictators, but it needs equitable principles of organizing the state and society: just, effective, flexibly responding to changes inside and outside the country - that is what Russia needs.