But the real magic of the New Year is that it opens our hearts to empathy and trust, generosity and mercy. - Vladimir Putin

We fight for the lives and security of our people. For our sovereignty and independence [...] The right to remain as Russia, a state with a 1,000 years of history.

Anyone who consciously goes along the path of betrayal, who is prepared for armed mutiny, and takes the course of blackmail and terrorist actions, will receive an inevitable punishment.

The CIA did its job to complete the coup <nowiki>[</nowiki>Euromaidan<nowiki>]</nowiki>. I think one of the Deputy Secretaries of State said that it cost a large sum of money, almost 5 billion dollars. But the political mistake was colossal! Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action, without losing Crimea. We would have never considered to even lift a finger if it hadn’t been for the bloody developments on Maidan. Because we agreed with the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union our borders should be along the borders of former Union’s republics. We agreed to that. But we never agreed to NATO’s expansion and moreover we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO. We did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades we kept urging them: don’t do this, don’t do that.