Russia will not soon become, if it ever becomes, a second copy of the United States or England - where liberal value have deep historic roots.

At least Germany and France have recently criticized that the Ukrainian central government has limited certain parts of the autonomy regulations to three years. They were supposed to last permanently.

I did not know that [ the Chancellor Angela Merkel is a bit frightened of dogs]. I wanted to make her happy. When I learned that she does not like dogs, I apologized, of course.

I believe that meetings at the top level in a relatively informal atmosphere are always useful, and there is reason to hope that we will make progress in resolving the matters we will be considering.

One of our objectives today is very important for many people, for millions of people on our planet - it is joining efforts in the fight against terrorism and other similar challenges: countering drug trafficking and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, fighting famine, preserving environment and biodiversity, taking efforts to make the world more predictable, more stable.

Russia and the United States are the biggest nuclear powers, this leaves us with an extra special responsibility. By the way, we manage to deal with it and work together in certain fields, particularly in resolving the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme. We worked together and we achieved positive results on the whole.

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.