Putin got lucky with the Sochi Olympics - it didn't fail, it was a great spectacle - and then he thought, Why not grab Crimea? And ended up getting stuck. If he had been a wise man, he wouldn't have done that. Of course, then he wouldn't have held the Olympics, either.

Revival of the Stalin cult is very clearly being encouraged from above, and it's a way of encouraging the cult of Putin. The message is that people of this type are the only ones who can govern the country properly. Putin is today's Stalin.

A meeting is an occasion when people gather together, some to say what they do not think, and others not to say what they really do.

The annexation of Crimea did undermine Ukraine to some extent, but less than it did Russia this is a case in which the victim wins. Ukraine got rid of a region that requires massive subsidies and received international sympathy meanwhile, Russia bit off this chunk it can't chew.

Sometimes there are historical moments when a country's course could be turned one way or the other, when fate can be escaped.

When the regime changed in Japan, the Japanese changed Russians too can change, as long as the conditions for it are present once again. Today, we are on the verge of a very uncertain situation when either everything will end in catastrophe, or better people will come to power.

Russia may soon get another chance to move closer to the West, to make a step - I do believe the first step toward democracy was made in the 1990s, and perhaps the next step can happen now. If this happens, the West needs to see it in time and support it in an intelligent way.

A real dictator usually isn't interested in money or women, just pure power.

When you deny something your power is much more conspicuous than when you approve it.

Only 3 to 5 percent of people are aware of being a part of history the overwhelming majority think things will always be the way they are.

They say that generally, rulers - dictators - tend to be short, like me. It gives them an inferiority complex when they were kids, they wanted to be big and to crush the small, but they were small themselves. Lenin was short, Stalin was short, Putin...

I think that right now the West understands Russia better than before and feels a much greater wariness toward it. I think that, if anything, Russia's sinister nature is exaggerated, in that most contemporary analysts in the West can't even imagine that Russia could be different. I think it can, with a different turn of events.