It is well known, widely known that the US President-elect [Donald Trump] has publicly spoken in favour of normalising Russian-American relations. We cannot but support this. Of course, we understand that it will not be an easy job, taking into account the degree to which Russian-American relations have degraded. But we are ready to cover our part of the way.

Problems between countries always exist, especially between such big countries as Russia and the United States. There have always been some issues, but I don't think we should go to extremes.

I always had a problem when someone was trying to place sport in social and political context. Sport is a separate and unique kind of human activity, which functions under its own rules and principles. It has nothing to do with the political agenda, and neither it should. When politics interferes with sport, unjust things happen.

However, crisis in world trade is, among other things, the result of using political tools in competition or simply for achieving political objectives with the help of economic restrictions.

We have never meddled in the domestic affairs of any state and we never will.

It is a fact that the US defence budget is larger than the defence budgets of all other countries taken together. This is why I understand the US President when he says that his NATO allies should take over part of this burden. It is a pragmatic and understandable approach.

Then, the specialists themselves, probably believe that in the course of EU expansion, for example, some elements concerning the readiness of some economies to enter the Eurozone have not been taken into account.