Vladimir Putin Quotes

I think that both Russia and other international actors, including those who are more actively engaged in the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis (that is the Federal Republic of Germany and France, the so-called Normandy Quartet, certainly, with close involvement of the United States, and we have intensified our dialogue on this issue), we should all be committed to the full and unconditional implementation of the agreements that were achieved in Minsk. The Minsk Agreements have to be implemented.

Russia and the United States are the biggest nuclear powers, this leaves us with an extra special responsibility. By the way, we manage to deal with it and work together in certain fields, particularly in resolving the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme. We worked together and we achieved positive results on the whole.

This is not our job, but we always follow the actions of our European partners closely and we wish them luck.

It is a major world power, and today it is an economic and military leader - no doubt about it. That is why America has a strong influence on the situation in the world in general.

However, the 1956 agreement refers to two islands while the Prime Minister [Shindzo Abe] is talking about four islands.

If we had joined efforts some time ago [with U.S], we could have avoided many problems the world is facing now, I believe.

Very interested in expanding the number of participants who will take part in laying the new gas pipeline in Europe.

Nowadays, there are plans to separate the Baltic states from the common power system of the former Soviet Union and to integrate them into the European system. What does it mean for us in practice? In practice, it means that a number of zones will emerge between several regions of the Russian Federation, where we will have no power transmission lines, since previously we used to have a loop transition through the Baltic countries.

You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.

I believe a healthy lifestyle is an extremely important thing which underpins solution to numerous important problems, including the health of the nation.

Of course, it's always bad to lose, of course it's always a hardship when you lose to yesterday's miners or yesterday's tractor drivers. But life is life. It'll surely go on.

60 percent of Syria is controlled either by ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra or other terrorist organisations, organisations that have been recognised as terrorist by the United States, as well as other countries and the UN. It is them and not anyone else who have control over 60 percent of Syrian territory.

When Saddam Hussein was eliminated, the Iraqi statehood and thousands of people from the former Baath party were also eliminated. Thousands of Iraqi servicemen, who were part of the state's Sunni elite, found themselves thrown out into the street. No one gave a thought about them, and today they end up in the ISIS army.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction also represents a serious danger. If these weapons were to fall into the hands of terrorists, and they pursue this aim, the consequences would be simply disastrous.

Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.

[Yasuhiro] Yamashita is a respected judo master not only in Japan but across the world. To me, he is an example of an outstanding athlete and a very good man.

I have several portraits of Jigoro Kano and a bust too, a very beautiful one.

At the request of my Japanese colleagues, in 2000 we revisited the possibility of signing a peace treaty based on the 1956 agreement.

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

Then there is another area of activity - economic interaction between Russia and the United States. Right now, for example, it has already been made public that we signed a large deal to privatise one of our biggest oil and gas companies, Rosneft. We know for sure that US companies, as well as Japanese ones, by the way, are keenly interested in cooperation in Russia's oil and gas sector, in joint work. This has immense significance for world energy markets and will directly affect the whole world economy.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

Look, there is parliamentary democracy in most European countries, there is parliamentary democracy in Japan, there is parliamentary democracy in many countries, but in the United States, for some reason, the State is organized differently, there is quite a stringent presidential republic.

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.

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.

It is a fact that the US defence budget is larger than the defence budgets of all other countries taken together. This is why I understand the US President when he says that his NATO allies should take over part of this burden. It is a pragmatic and understandable approach.

You know every stage of your life has an impact on you.

I will not offer my thoughts on what Japan could and should have done, this is none of my business, it is the business of the Japanese leadership. But we should understand how practicable all our agreements are as a whole given the allied obligations Japan has assumed, how much independence there is in making those decision, and what we can hope for, what we can ultimately arrive at.

The goal we have set for ourselves, which is to diversify our cooperation with China, is making progress.

Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.

I think Russia has already turned the toughest pages in its history. We're only moving forward now, only get stronger.

No matter who uses chemical weapons against people and organisations, the international community must formulate a common policy and find a solution that would make the use of such weapons impossible for anyone.

Russia should be an effective and competitive state with a sustainable economy, developed social and political system flexible to changes domestically and globally.

President Obama hasn't been elected by the American people in order to be pleasant to Russia.

No one except for al-Assad's army is fighting against ISIS or other terrorist organisations in Syria, no one else is fighting them on Syrian territory. Minor airstrikes, including those by the United States aircraft, do not resolve the issue in essence; in fact, they do not resolve it at all.

Our society, including the liberals, must understand that there must be order.

Japan announced that it would not comply with this declaration [ 1956]. Later on, the Soviet Union also declared that the declaration could not be fulfilled unilaterally, by the USSR alone.

Spying has always gone on since ancient times.

We would like to draw the attention of our partners, of potential investors to the Russian Far East.

At some point a few years ago Japan unilaterally stopped those talks and broke off contacts with us. It was not we who broke off contacts with Japan, it was the Japanese side that broke off contacts with us.

I would like to repeat: I know absolutely nothing about [hacker's attacks], and Russia has never done anything like this at the State level.

As for the President-elect [Donald Trump], he has his own views on things, and this is also fairly natural.

Maybe they have nothing else to do in America but to talk about me.

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.

Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force.

If you aspire to be a leader of your own country, you must speak your own language, for God's sake.

If Russia's interests and security are threatened, Russia will resist. Everyone needs to know that.

I read papers, try to watch news programs on television, but, as a rule, recorded. During the day I have no time for that, so I watch something taped. As for the newspapers, I try to get through them every day. Additionally, of course, I look through news bulletins.

A foreign threat is useful to put things in order in one's own camp, to make one's allies follow the bloc discipline. Iran does not fit this role too well, and it is very tempting to revive Russia's image of the enemy. But nobody in Europe is afraid anymore.