Let us resolve the internal political problems of Russia ourselves

Political populism always poses a great danger because it disorients people, creates excessive expectations or, on the contrary, prioritises objectives that are clearly not priorities or are simply impossible to achieve.

You have made a very good point: both the Prime Minister [Shindzo Abe] and I enjoy a fairly high level of trust among the citizens of our countries.

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.

We handed over nothing, those territories [Tarabarov Island to China] were disputed and we have been negotiating this issue with the People's Republic of China, let me stress that, for 40 years, and finally managed to come to an agreement. One part of the territory was assigned to Russia, while another part - to the People's Republic of China.

Democracy means the power of the people and the possibility of influencing the governing parties. Russia had had enough experience with a one-party-system - we will not go back there.

In order to preserve a balance, while we aren't planning to build a missile defence of our own, as it's very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet, we have to develop offensive strike systems. They [U.S.] should give us all the information about the missile defence, and we will be ready then to provide some information about offensive weapons.