In order to get anything through sometimes you have to bribe, sometimes you have to co-opt a bureaucrat. There is no clear dividing line between business and state, between what is legal and what is illegal.

Yeltsin's delivery during his oath and the fact that he made no speech indicated that he was unwell, but his bearing when he walked to the podium suggested that the illness was not very serious.

They want to make sure that the question is not resolved, that they continue to fight. And they will be a permanent irritating factor in the Russian politics.

The impeachment results do not necessarily mean that the president is strong. He is not. The results just mean that the opposition to the president is even weaker than most of us expected it to be.

I believe that the Stabilization Fund is a sphere where simple solutions must be avoided.

After so many years, I feel more American than anything else, but I'm also Romanian and whatever other oddities of temperament I picked up elsewhere, in Transylvania or France, for instance. These days, everybody is both an exile and a resident - they don't call it the global village for nothing.