[Egon] Bahr even said: If Russia agreed to the NATO expansion, he would never come to Moscow again.

My family suffered very major losses during the Second World War, that's true. In my father's family, there were five brothers. I think four of them died. On my mother's side the picture was pretty much the same. Russia has suffered great losses. And of course we can't forget that.

This is a region [ Far East] with a substantially developed transport and railroad infrastructure. In recent years we have been actively developing road connection.

The transfer of power is always a test of the constitutional system, a test of its strength.

Now we are talking about concluding a free trade agreement between the Eurasian Economic Council, recently established in the post-Soviet space, and China. A similar agreement was concluded a short time ago with Vietnam. Then, we will coordinate, at least we are ready to do this, the Chinese concept of the Silk Road Economic Belt with our newly-created regional organisation. So, do you understand how diverse, multi-faceted and deep Russian-Chinese ties have become over the last couple of decades? And we resolved the border issue.

All we need is good will, and we have to start working in a way that considers each other's interests [with U.S]. In my view, this is a mandatory condition.

It is very difficult to enter a single currency zone having fairly weak economic parameters and maintain a favourable state of the economy, not to mention positive growth rates. We have witnessed it not only in Europe, but for example in Argentina (nearly 10 years ago or more), when they tied the national currency to the dollar and later they did not know what to do about it.