Vladimir Putin

We are not going to close anything… I also worked in the security services and know it is easiest to ban, and harder to find civilized solutions. Therefore, I’m going to urge all my colleagues to take this route, the route of security and law enforcement agencies using modern methods to combat offences, including terrorism, without restricting freedoms including on the Internet.

Whoever is the first to cry ‘Stop the thief’ is the one who is guilty.

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia’s security and independence.

I think: the powers like to talk about ‘freedom’ in order to wash the population’s brains.

I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, with the ending of the Warsaw Pact mutual defence strategy, was the obvious time for Nato to have been disbanded.

With regards to the infrastructure, these 11 stadiums. Of course, we spent a lot of money on this and it is imperative that all of this infrastructure, I completely agree, it must work and above all work toward the development of sport on a large scale.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

No serious analyst believes that the ruling clerics [in Iran] are eager to see their country and possessions vaporized, the immediate consequence of their coming even close to initiating a nuclear war.

When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don’t eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

The Eurasian union is a project meant to preserve the identities of nations and the historic Eurasian community in the new century, in a new world.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

Banning guns is an idea whose time has come.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the current economic recession, which is particularly powerful in New York City, have put a number of building plans on hold for the time being.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

WE are good, and THEY are evil. That useful principle trumps virtually any argument. Analysis of commentary and much of scholarship reveals that its roots commonly lie in that crucial principle, which is not argued but asserted.

I would bet if you took a poll in the FBI I would win that poll by more than anybody’s won a poll.

One who views Latin America today [1981] might well assume that Hitler had won the war, though in fact it is American liberalism that a bears a major responsibility for the plague of terror and torture regimes that often mimic the Nazis.

If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications.