It's better to be hanged for loyalty than be rewarded for betrayal.

We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade.

An increase of two or three degrees wouldn't be so bad for a northern country like Russia. We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up.

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.

Our agreements on creating the conditions for preparing a peace treaty [with Japan] should be rooted in this trust. This may be achieved, for example, by large-scale economic activities that will also cover the Kuril Islands. It may be achieved by solving purely humanitarian issues, for instance, unhindered visa-free travel by former residents of the Southern Kuril Islands to where they used to live: visiting cemeteries, native places and so on.

The Russian people chose democracy at the beginning of the 1990s and this was their final choice.

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.