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.

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

We are going to set up a branch of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre here [on the Far Easter]. We are also planning to open local branches of the Hermitage Museum and the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet.

The democratic choice Russian people made in the early 90's is final.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the issues of foreign policy and defense are fully in the hands of the president.

I have heard this a thousand times. Of course every state has the right to organize its security the way it deems appropriate. But the states that were already in NATO, the member states, could also have followed their own interests - and abstained from an expansion to the east.