We have seen very clearly over these past years that there are quite a few people who are sceptical, or let us put it another way, are cautious about the development of Russian-American relations, but the underlying fundamental interests of the United States and Russia demand that our relations be normalised.

If you want to become an Islamic radical and have yourself circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow... I would recommend that he who does the surgery does it so you'll have nothing growing back afterward.

I guess I can call myself a pragmatist with a conservative perspective. It would be hard for me to explain this, but I always take realities of today, lessons from the distant and recent past into consideration.

Under our regional cooperation projects, we are building roads and bridges. The scope of regional cooperation [with China] is constantly growing.

Thus, in view of what I have said, we could not officially hack [Hillary's Clinton mail]. It would require certain intuition and knowledge of the U.S. domestic policy peculiarities. I am not sure that even our experts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have such intuition.

Russia is opposed to the proliferation of mass destruction weapons, including nuclear weapons, and in this context we call upon our Iranian friends to abandon the uranium enrichment programme.

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.