The participants expressed anxiety about the problems the Defense Ministry had been meeting in realizing its plans for future development.

Notably, it was only possible [ negotiating on the Tarabarov Island], and this is very important, due to the high level of trust Russia and China reached in their relations by that time. If we reach the same level of trust with Japan, we might be able to reach certain compromises.

I hope that there will be no particular need for us to attract external funding. It is worth noting that despite the fact the turnover is smaller now we are still maintaining a trade surplus.

Of course, nobody does [want another Cuban Missile Crisis].

This work is either useless or harmful, because there is nothing good about populism. If you wanted to hear my opinion on this issue, that is what I think.

As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even one step ahead, who do not want to think and do not intend to honour their commitments.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that we have gone from pure trade [with China] in traditional goods [energy resources, such as hydrocarbons, oil and now natural gas, petrochemicals on the one hand and textiles and footwear on the other] to a whole new level of economic cooperation. For example, we are working together on space programmes. Moreover, we are developing and soon will begin the production of a heavy helicopter. We are now tracing the plan for the creation of a wide-body long-range aircraft.