So you address Trump as ‘Donald’, in a friendly way.

He calls me Vladimir, I call him Donald.

I mean, you have worked with four American presidents. Once Bush saw something in your eyes...

Yes...

But things did not go well with Obama, is that correct?

Well...

Who was it that you felt most at ease with?

Now it is difficult to say. Indeed, I had fairly constructive relationships with each of them.

However, you did not get along with Obama.

In any case, I had good relations with Bush.

Did somebody put you at odds with him?

M?

Did somebody put you at odds with him?

No, it has nothing to do with ‘being at odds’. It's just that, when a person says that...

Do you mean Barack?

M?

Do you mean Barack?

Yes. When he said that the US is an exceptional nation, with special, exclusive rights in the world, I cannot agree. God created us all equal and gave us equal rights. So, I think it is absolutely ungrounded to say that some people should have exclusive rights to anything.

On a scale from one to five, not to make it too complicated, how would you rate Russia’s current relationship with the US?

I would give it a three.

A three? Not bad.

Between a two and a three. More like a three though. Look...

And how about earlier?

Look, we do cooperate on counter-terrorism. It was actually I who called Trump to thank the US for giving us the information.

You mean on the St. Petersburg cell?

Yes. They had been looking into them for a long time. And after that, the FBI provided this information to the Federal Security Service.

Does it mean that the Americans are working better than us on our own soil?

They work... I am not going to talk about it now, because this information is classified. They work globally.

I'm not going to tell anybody.

I'll whisper in your ear afterwards.

Deal.

They work globally, and so do we.

Right.

But they were the ones who tracked this case down. That time, we did not. Our services track down a lot of them, thus preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, they catch and intercept them. Several dozen a year. That specific case was detected by the US. I would like to thank them a lot for sharing that information with us.

So it’s a three now, but what was the peak rate?

Well, okay... Trade turnover used to be higher, it dropped to 20 from 28, still very low. But in the last two years, under Trump, trade turnover started to grow. In the area of security, a while ago we concluded an agreement with Obama, the New START Treaty was also signed when he was in office. However, it has not been extended yet. So this raises a question. The US keeps imposing sanctions on Russia. Another question. Take Nord Stream 2, they imposed sanctions on it as well. The US has always been against the development of our economic relations with Europe, even in the 1960s, when we started the construction of, if you remember, the gas-for-pipes deal. Thank God, now we produce large-diameter pipes ourselves, which is, by the way, another recent achievement of our white metallurgy and other sectors. 75 percent, and it is crucial, 75 percent of facilities in our manufacturing sector, as well as machinery and equipment, have been produced in recent years, in the last 10 to 15 years. This is quite an achievement. They have always been against it. Against Nord Stream 1 – they did oppose it, now they oppose Nord Stream 2 in the same manner. So why did they do it, what for? They wanted to ensure transit through Ukraine. It’s rather strange, isn’t it? So they are wooing Ukraine and have established external control over it, but they want Ukraine to be sustained by our money as well. They don’t want to give Ukraine money themselves. They want Ukraine to receive something from us through transit fees. Okay, we agree, because we, too, will be interested in the growth in gas consumption in Europe in general and in Ukraine in particular, we will continue the transfer of gas, even if the volume is lower. However, the main motivation, the excuse for imposing sanctions against Nord Stream 2 was the need to ensure transit through Ukraine. But we have signed a transit agreement with Ukraine. What is needed now? They need to lift sanctions against Nord Stream. There are no grounds for imposing them. And if the sanctions remain, it will mean that there is only one motive – to ensure competitive advantages for their LNG, for their liquefied gas.

The strongest player sets the rules.

They are securing a market for their products, exclusively in their own selfish interests and at the expense of European consumers. But if the price of a fossil fuel rises by 25 to 30 per cent, the competitiveness of the German economy, as well as the European one, will be undermined.

But in fact, in geopolitical terms, Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok does not exist anymore.

But it never existed. ‘Anymore!’ You’re talking about something which never existed, as if it is something we lost. Back in the day, de Gaulle spoke about a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. Then I extended that idea a little, and started saying: why to the Urals, why not to the Pacific, to the Far East? I think it should be the goal.

Was your Munich speech an overreaction?

No. Now they repeat everything I said. For example, the German leaders. They almost repeat it word for word… They were mad at me at the time, angry with me, they said, why did you do that?

They took offense.

No. Got angry because, well, it was quite rude, at the wrong time; ‘why would you do that’. And what did I say? I said that it is inadmissible that one country, the United States, extends its jurisdiction beyond its national borders. Today, say, the German leadership says exactly that, that it is inadmissible that the United States imposes secondary sanctions, i.e. on companies, that have no relation to the United States, trying to prevent them from pursuing their national interests.

Not only distant, but also our close neighbours started to distance themselves from us in a way.

Well, I don't see that. Who exactly started to distance themselves?

Take Georgia, for instance.

They didn’t just distance themselves – they jumped aside. Through no fault of ours. They should thank Mikhail Nikolayevich [Saakashvili] for that.

But he hasn't been around for a long time.

Not at all! He is running around, from square to square, on rooftops, like a tomcat. We had a lot of discussions with him on the subject when he was still in office. I think that Mikhail Nikolayevich would recall that. I told him: ‘Listen, don't you ever try to deal with South Ossetia and Abkhazia with the use of force.’ ‘No, no, I'll never do that,’ he said. And he still stormed in, stormed in and got knocked back!