Russians have different far lofty ambitions; more of a spiritual kind. It's more about your relationship with God .

Just take Kosovo: back then, UN bodies decided that Kosovo should become independent of Serbia and that the interests of Serbia's central government had to be subordinated. You can read that in all the records, also in the German ones.

As for these 60 years, and in general more than a hundred years, we have had different periods in relations and there have been tragic pages in our history, but since 1956 when we restored diplomatic relations, regrettably, we have not had a foundation on which to build ties that would correspond to our wishes and that are currently required in bilateral cooperation with Japan.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

We conducted talks on border issues with our friends in the People's Republic of China for 40 years. There were also issues related to specific territories.

European and American values do not fully coincide.

At the request of our Japanese partners, we have reopened these talks [about territories]. What command is given in this case in judo? You probably know better than I do: Yoshi (continue). So we will continue.