Pastoral Resources

We see considerable strain in Russia, and that's obviously a matter of concern to us. It's in the very strong self-interest of Russia to continue on the reform path.

It will be undertaken, of course, in the June or July summit, and then to bring NATO closer to Russia or vice versa is a way to move toward integration - toward the integration of Europe.

I think there is a good deal of promise in those discussions as well. I think there is a range of matters that might be discussed between NATO and Russia that can provide a mechanism for talking through these issues, a way to give reassurance on these issues.

The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia.

Bill Gates finds people in Russia to hire them to Microsoft. That's the Russian interest in this process.

Russia should support globalization. The Internet can develop in Russia in a very speedy way.

The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia.

I don't think Russia will follow the United States's way. I don't think Russia will follow the French way. I'm sure Russia will find its own way.

You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

There remains, however, the hope, at least in Russia, that, as sometimes happens in history, the memory of lost alternatives will one day inspire efforts to regain them.

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia.

Russia's biggest problem is organized crime and its leaders are influenced by the Russian mafia. But it's not right to call it a Russian mafia, it's a Jewish mafia.

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.

My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.

In the sense that people who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded.

We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums.

We have an interest in excellent relations because we are neighbours as Europeans with Russia. We are allies with the United States in the NATO framework.

At the end of all this, Russia held in her hands a vast belt of land running from the Baltic sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, comprising eleven nations with a population of 100 million people.