Vladimir Putin

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

Between major countries, there certainly always are some common ground and points of tension.

Nationalizing the whole oil sector would be a difficult and highly dangerous process, which could have negative consequences not only for the sector but for the whole economy.

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.

He who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart; he who wants to revive it in its previous form has no head.

I spend a little time every day to play sports.

If you look at Saddam Hussein, he killed terrorists. I’m not saying he was an angel, but this guy killed terrorists.

Every society is three meals away from chaos.

Many countries are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of US power; they can’t even control their own wealthy. Their rich have virtually no social obligations-they don’t pay taxes and don’t keep their money in the country.

You have no right to criticise Russia over Chechnya.

A man’s eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

[The general population – “the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”] are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be.

Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.

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.

It is beyond imagining in responsible circles that we might have some culpability for mass slaughter and destruction, or owe some debt to the millions of maimed and orphaned, or to the peasants who still die from exploding ordnance left from the U.S. assault…

Take Spain. It was admitted into the European Community with some conditions, one of which was that it is to be what is pretty openly called a ‘barrier’ to these hordes of North Africans who the Europeans are afraid are going to flock up to Europe. It’s a narrow distance.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia’s good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Comparing the EU to the Soviet Union is as unwise as it is insulting. The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, borders and walls, violence against citizens and neighbours. The European Union is about freedom and human rights, prosperity and peace, life without fear, it is about democracy and pluralism – a continent without internal borders and walls.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.