Every head of state and government in the world is allowed to have his opinion and to voice it.

If everything stops functioning our level will be able to ensure our trade turnover using its gold and foreign currency reserves for at least six months or more, which is more than enough.

Yume is a no-nonsense dog. There are many people here, with camcorders running, lights shining and cameras clicking. She is being a guard dog.

Democracy means the power of the people and the possibility of influencing the governing parties. Russia had had enough experience with a one-party-system - we will not go back there.

We negotiated the construction of a gas pipeline system along the bottom of the Black Sea to Bulgaria. We signed certain treaties of a technical nature, contracts for laying the gas pipeline. And then Bulgaria created such conditions that the project's implementation became impossible, which was obviously against its own national interests. The former Bulgarian leadership was, in fact, aware of that and acknowledged it. But we trusted them when we were launching that project. We sustained losses amounting to millions, several million dollars. We would not want to get into such situations.

Where in the world have you seen construction people who do everything on time, with good quality and at minimal prices? Just give me one country like that. A country like that doesn't exist in the world, you know. There's not one such country anywhere in the world.

Looking at the map of the Russian Federation, one can see a country covering mostly northern areas; today more than 70 percent of our territory is or can be referred to as northern, if not the Far North. We have a rather small warm Black sea strip in the South and - to tell the truth - quite a few regions with a hospitable warm climate.