Vladimir Putin

Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.

I believe I have mentioned that President Trump – well it’s his first presidential term and he’s gaining momentum, he’s building up his experience in this field and we’ve had a dialogue on this issue [North Korea]. He listens to what I’m saying, he listens to my arguments.

Russia is opposed to the proliferation of mass destruction weapons, including nuclear weapons, and in this context we call upon our Iranian friends to abandon the uranium enrichment programme.

I don’t regret anything. I did everything absolutely correctly.

John McCain fought in Vietnam – I think that he has enough civilian blood on his hands.

The events in Crimea themselves have nothing to do with what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other regions. In my opinion, when the world becomes unipolar, or when someone tries to make it so, then this one pole has the illusion that all issues can be settled through power. And only when there is a balance of power does the desire to negotiate appears.

I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.

I’ve never had the passion for politics.

It was a respectful ceremony and I stood in respect throughout it.

I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors.

Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan, ‘You’re either with us or against us.’

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

Nobody has better respect for intelligence than Donald Trump.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

Read, say, George Washington, a leading figure in the settler-colonial society we live in. His view was – his words – was that we have to ‘extirpate’ the Iroquois; they’re in our way. They were an advanced civilization.

According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August [2011], some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school’s team wins the football game? I don’t know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me… why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports.

No one’s asked me. If somebody felt there was a job I could actually do I would consider it — not out of any ambition to be in Washington, but I do want to rise to the occasion of serving there if warranted.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

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.

We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.