Let us resolve the internal political problems of Russia ourselves

We have good personal relationship with President Obama, our relations are quite frank and business-like. And this is quite enough to do our job.

Of course one always has to follow international law. This was also the case in Crimea. According to the Charter of the United Nations, every people has the right to self-determination.

The Russians have turned out to be the largest divided nation in the world nowadays. Is that not a problem?

But if the U.S. were to leave now and abandon Iraq without establishing the grounds for a united country, that would definitely be a second mistake.

Concerning our possibilities on the international financial markets, the sanctions are severely harming Russia. But the biggest harm is currently caused by the decline of the prices for energy. We suffer dangerous revenue losses in our export of oil and gas, which we can partly compensate for elsewhere. But the whole thing also has a positive side: if you earn so many petrodollars - as we once did - that you can buy anything abroad, this slows down developments in your own country.

The G20 was established as a forum to discuss, first and foremost, world economic issues. If we load it with... Of course, politics affects economic processes, this is obvious, but if we bring some squabbles, or not squabbles, rather, some matters that are really important but relate purely to world politics, we will overload the G20 agenda and instead of addressing such issues as finance, structural economic reforms, tax evasion and so forth, we will engage in endless debates concerning the Syrian crisis or some other global challenges, of which there are many, or the Middle East problem.