Vladimir Putin

They invited a large investor, Coca-Cola, to take over a plot of land in Pulkovo Heights and install high-capacity power and communications cables, hoping that other companies would follow suit. It worked. After Coca-Cola developed their piece of land, Gillette came, then Wrigley, and then some pharmaceutical companies. An economic zone thus took shape within the city, where total investment now exceeds half a billion dollars. Furthermore, with the Committee’s encouragement, the city’s infrastructure began to be modernized to create the conditions necessary for successful business. The first major deal that Putin supported was the completion of a fiber-optic cable to Copenhagen. This project had been initiated back in the Soviet era but never completed. Now the efforts were successful, providing St. Petersburg with world-class international telephone connections.

I have never stated Russia is an energy superpower, but we have more reserves than almost anybody else. We have always behaved, and we will continue to behave, in a responsible way. We intend to participate in the elaboration of common rules in the energy sector and to abide by rules which are developed together.

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.

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.

Chechnya is part and parcel of the Russian Federation.

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?

So investors don’t go down to the television studio and make sure that the local talk show host or news director is doing what they want. On the other hand, there are other complex mechanisms which make it fairly certain that they will do what the owners and investors want.

When we analyze this war in a materialistic way and ask when is it going to end and who will be the winner and the loser, it means that we do not see the endgame.

The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.

It’s not that the US is trying to increase the use of drugs, it’s just the natural thing to do. If you were in a position where you had to hire thugs and gangsters to kill peasants and break strikes, and you had to do it with untraceable money, what would come to your mind?

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.

How do you expect the Germans to revolt when they don’t even dare walk on the grass?

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

The message will be very, very clear that we are campaigning to defend and extend workers rights and trade union rights in Britain.

If you think about the way the society works in general, it works pretty much the way the founding fathers said. The society should be governed by those who own it, and they intend to follow Adam Smith’s vile maxim. That’s at the core of things.

Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the ‘working masses’.

But that [‘friendly Fascism’] requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent, the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.