Vladimir Putin

We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.

Political activities in Russia should be as transparent as possible. Financing political activities from abroad is something the state should keep an eye on.

In 1995, Russia virtually gave Chechnya de facto statehood and independence even though, de jure, it didn’t recognize Chechnya as an independent state. And I would like to emphasize strongly that Russia withdrew all of its troops, we moved the prosecutors, we moved all the police, dismantled all the courts, completely, 100 percent.

The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres – economic, political and humanitarian – and has imposed itself on other states.

If you are a Christian, you are in danger. If you decided to abandon your faith and become an atheist, you also are to be liquidated according to their concept. You are in danger if you decide to become a Muslim. It is not going to save you anyway because they believe traditional Islam is hostile to their goals.

The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us from taking extreme steps on the international arena that are highly dangerous for modern civilization.

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.

An educational system should cultivate from kindergarten to graduate school, and in the best cases sometimes does, and that leads to people who are, at least by my standards, well educated.?

I do not want to be controlled by any superpower. I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in the world, and that is why I do not let any superpower control me.

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.’

I’m eternally grateful to fate and the citizens of Russia that they’ve trusted me to be the head of the Russian government.

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it’s just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, ‘We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.’ Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It’s a very destructive ideology.

The only reason I don’t use the word class is that the terminology of political discourse is so debased it’s hard to find any words at all. That’s part of the point — to make it impossible to talk.

The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.

We don’t pass by on the other side.

Of course we as Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. But as today’s Report recommends, can we please leave Hitler and Nazi metaphors alone (especially in the context of Israel). Why? Because the Shoah is still in people’s family experience.

Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.

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.

I read in Novaya Gazeta a list of all the properties owned by Roman Abramovich, and it’s incredible. I’m ashamed.