We in Russia have always considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people. I still think so.

Let us not forget that we have two governmental reserve funds: the Reserve Fund and the National Wellbeing Fund that represent together $100 billion.

The Prime Minister [Shinzō Abe] proposed advancing to a new level of economic engagement, putting forward eight lines of cooperation in the most important and interesting areas both for Russia and for Japan.

We are ready to meet [with Donald Trump] at any time, this is no problem for us, but I believe we should be patient and wait for the complicated process of forming the new administration to be complete.

It is simply that we treat Japanese history, the history of the Japanese people and its unique culture with greater respect and interest. This generates enormous interest in Russia!

When you start to meet with ordinary people you understand that a Russian person, really any person from Russia, a Tatar, a Mordvin, a Chechen, a Dagestani, they are very open people, even a little naive. But there's one defining trait that probably all peoples have, although it comes out especially strongly in us. That's a drive toward fairness. It's one of the dominating, I think, traits in the mentality of a person from Russia, a Russian person.

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.