I am in regular contact with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe. We have met several times this year [2016].

I think: the powers like to talk about "freedom" in order to wash the population's brains.

I hope that being in places from the [Shinzo Abe] Prime Minister's past will motivate us to have a sincere, very practical and, I hope, productive conversation.

Then there is another area of activity - economic interaction between Russia and the United States. Right now, for example, it has already been made public that we signed a large deal to privatise one of our biggest oil and gas companies, Rosneft. We know for sure that US companies, as well as Japanese ones, by the way, are keenly interested in cooperation in Russia's oil and gas sector, in joint work. This has immense significance for world energy markets and will directly affect the whole world economy.

[Yasuhiro] Yamashita is a respected judo master not only in Japan but across the world. To me, he is an example of an outstanding athlete and a very good man.

Everyone must hoe his plot daily.

Over the course of the year 1990, the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had many conversations with President [Mikhail] Gorbachev and other Soviet officials.