I often heard the same question: What place does Russia reserve for itself in the world; how does it see itself; what is its place? We are a peace-loving state and we want to cooperate with all of our neighbors and with all of our partners.

The biggest nationalist in Russia: that's me.

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.

There is another domain that we consider relevant and having good prospects - marine biology. For many years this region [Russian Far East] has been home for one of the leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Marine Biology.

There are many issues in the global economy in general and in the western economy as well: population ageing, drop in labour productivity growth rates. This is obvious. The overall demographic situation is very complicated.

We should find other platforms, other forums for that [foreign policy], and there are plenty of them, including, for example, the UN and the Security Council.

At some point a few years ago Japan unilaterally stopped those talks and broke off contacts with us. It was not we who broke off contacts with Japan, it was the Japanese side that broke off contacts with us.