One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

In relations between the states ... the interests of the country should be correlated with the interests of other countries, and compromise is to be found when resolving the most complex issues.

We spoke about economic sanctions only recently in Lima, within the framework of APEC. Almost all the leaders represented at APEC (the Asia Pacific region), Pacific countries, spoke about the same thing, namely, that we are going through a very acute crisis in world trade, international trade, related, among other things, to restrictions on the markets of certain countries.

Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society.

Everyone must hoe his plot daily.

I believe that a country, Russia in this case, which can defend the honour and dignity of its citizens, protect their lives, and fulfill its international legal commitments under the peacekeeping mandate, will not find itself in isolation, no matter what our partners in Europe or the United States may think, expressing their bloc mentality.

Of course, we will work towards that end. Of course, we will work to achieve this result. However, you have just mentioned the 1956 agreement, and one may recall that these negotiations were later terminated, in effect, on Japan's initiative.