Putin is not a strategist at all. He has brilliant tactics, but he is a very bad strategist overall. And I think he is acting very opportunistically there, just to play the cards with America. He was very proud of… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share
Russia can fall apart. It's not because of the oil prices ... It's because what sticks a country together is a common interest of… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
From the point of view of legislation of the Constitution, my mandate has been given by my constituency. So it's only my constituency that… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
Putin is very much afraid of leaving. Because he is formally right now in his first term, so has another eight years from now.… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
Putin is not a strategist at all. He has brilliant tactics, but he is a very bad strategist overall. And I think he is acting very opportunistically there, just to play the cards with America. He was very proud of himself when he convinced us to give up on chemical weapons so that it could be played down and prevent… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share
I think that we are right now - the society - is living in the Facebook era and the political system is still in the 19th century prior to the Industrial era. Why for God's sake do you need to be socially liberal and economically conservative? Or to be economically market-oriented but at the same time socially, extremely conservative? Why… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share
Putin is just maneuvering. He wants to be respected. He wants to be an important player in global politics. He wants people to negotiate… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
With Tatars, the situation is a little bit more complex. They are geographically very isolated so they need the rest of Russia. When they pump oil, they need pipelines to deliver it so they need those connections. We in Siberia don't need those connections. The only thing which actually sticks us together is the cultural similarities and the relatives that… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share
Generally, Putin thinks of himself as Christian. I don't think he is, but he pretends to think that he is. In terms of his… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
Right now, I see a lot of alarming trends inside Russia, especially in Siberia, which I represent in the parliament. People start to ask questions: If we mine all the natural resources - if we have all the oil, all the gas, all the coal, all the gold, all the diamonds - why the hell do we need central Russia?… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share
In the world of today, I think that entrepreneurs are the new emerging ruling class - I identify it as the startup class. That's… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
My political tradition is on the left, but I think that more modern leftists, they sometimes get stuck with this vision of large government… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
I think that it's inevitable if society will be run by old-timers who are still in the paradigm of the past, so I think… — Ilya Ponomarev Copy Share Image
