businesspeople-from-russia

"We shouldn't just observe the wonderful entrepreneurs, we need to move ahead systematically," Itskov said in an interview. "We are really at the time when technology can affect human evolution. I want us to shape the future, bring it up for public discussion, and avoid any scenario that could damage humanity."

"We are facing the time where the unconscious evolution period has almost finished, and we come to the new era, a new period of controlled evolution"

"Autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot." In other words, they'll have the tech for implanting the human brain into the robot. By 2035, a human should be able to upload their brain into a robot, and by 2045 our bodies will be replaced with holograms. When this happens, Itskov says we will become "a new species"

"When we choose where we should go, the main criteria is if there is injustice."

"But when this war began, it was a really big shock. I couldn’t believe it and we immediately decided to leave. And I made some antiwar declarations and now it’s not safe for me to go to my hometown. It is super sad."

"Since the first day, it was a story of fighting injustice. That is what really motivates me, because in my life, I had a lot of injustices."

"We started to fight, they heavily beat me, broke my nose, and tore my jacket."

"And if some of them achieve success, we have a good chance to invent a new kind of tech entrepreneurship that changes the trajectory of modern capitalism. This is my goal."

"Before this, I thought that we could in small steps change life in Russia, despite the fact it’s a very corrupt state."

"Business and politics are two opposite poles of life. There’s plenty of businesspeople that make headway in their field with the help or involvement of the authorities. It’s a personal choice, I am no judge by all means. That being said, I personally prefer keeping those two areas separated."

"If I ever get involved in basketball, I want to make something extraordinary."

"I am by all means a traditional gentleman. I arrived here around 1992-1993, my address has been the same ever since. Everybody knows me here. My partners and I have invested significantly in Monaco over the past ten years. My parents are buried in the Principality, Monaco is my spiritual homeland."

"This money ($1m) my partners and I spent, first of all, on buying PCR-testing equipment and protective gear for medical personnel."

"There was a time when the chemical industry was catatonic. The factories stood idle, there were no raw materials and operating capital for the fertilizers production. At that time, a rather inconspicuous meeting of the Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian businessmen and chemical enterprises’ heads took place in Budapest. We came to the conclusion that reviving the chemical industry is worth the sweat. Was our decision risky? Absolutely."

"I consider myself a victim of a commercial raid attack. This type of attacks is common across the former USSR states, including Ukraine, and it basically is blackmail of successful public figures by means of bribing the law enforcement agencies. They use several fabricated cases to pressure me into giving up my high-value enterprise for nothing."

"Players need to see me, they need to know I’m here for them. That’s how I see my part in the team. We are a family, and we have to protect our family values."

"In sports, you’re either in the midst of it and work hard, or you’re on the sidelines, wasting your money for nothing."

"This applies to any finished goods production: the more stages of production are concentrated in the country, the more jobs and more profit remain in the country."

"In contemporary Russia, unlike the old USSR or present-day North Korea, the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable."

"One of the key things is to understand there are no limits to your knowledge (and) understanding what you can do."

"Very difficult thing to do. If you look at performance record of managers, being human hurts you and 80% of managers under-perform benchmark over short- and long-term period, it's tough game."

"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."

"It's having this trust in people around you; when you're thrown an opportunity - embracing it, though it may be really scary, because at the end of the day, you can do it - you have a toolbox being a professional. It's all about just breathing deeply and having allies, so having a team, you can never do stuff like that on your own"

"I think you need to be able to focus on the secular, i.e. focus on big trends because there is so much noise that various issues bring that clearly influence the price movement in the near-term but ultimately doesn't shift the needle."

"But it's difficult, we are humans, that's why maybe machines at some point will be better at optimizing the information flow, optimizing for judgment and crowding of the market and may come up with better portfolios."

"Since the start of the war, I have been focused on trying to support the talented Russian engineers who took a decision to leave the country. It has been an extraordinarily complex process, helping these engineers to start a new life."

"I am known as one of the founders of Yandex. In our minds, when we founded it, we weren’t only creating a technology company. We were helping to create a new Russia – open, progressive, integrated into the global economy, and able to bring value to the world beyond natural resources."

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it. I am horrified about the fate of people in Ukraine – many of them my personal friends and relatives – whose houses are being bombed every day."

"You stinking wretches, what are you doing? You’re bastards! Get your asses out of the offices you've been put in to defend this country. You are the Defense Ministry. You didn’t do a damn thing to advance. Why the fuck are you allowing these drones to fly to Moscow?"

"The special military operation was done for the purpose of “denazification,” while we’ve made Ukraine into a nation that’s known throughout the world. They’re like the Greeks or the Romans at their peaks. And as far as “demilitarization,” if they had some 500 tanks at the start of the special military operation, now they have 5,000. If they had 20,000 capable fighters before, now they have 400,000. What kind of demilitarization is that? Now it looks more like we did the opposite, somehow or other, and militarized Ukraine."

"As a citizen, I am deeply indignant that these scum [Russia's Defense Ministry] are sitting quietly and wearing out their seats with their fat asses smeared with expensive creams."

"Wagner Group is currently the best army in the world. Of course, out of propriety, I have to say that the next best one is the Russian army, but I think the Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies. They’re highly organized and highly trained, they have good intelligence, and they have a diverse arsenal. They work equally well on any systems, whether Soviet ones or NATO ones."

"I will make sure they will bear responsibility for it."

"I have never been a chef; I used to be a restaurateur and quite successful. I can't cook myself. They should have just come up with 'Putin's butcher' instead."

"Penalties for war crimes should be seriously toughened."

"First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up. It is wrong to think that there are hundreds of them – there are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed...And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that."

"These are Wagner lads who died today. The blood is still fresh. They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices."

"We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia...We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition...Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard."

"We came in boorishly, trampling all over Ukraine’s territory in search of Nazis. And while we searched for Nazis, we ****** up everyone we could. We came up to Kyiv and — I’ll put it in plain Russian — **** the bed and retreated. Then on to Kherson — we **** the bed and retreated. And somehow things aren’t working out for us."

"Shoigu, Gerasimov, where the **** is our ammunition?"

"[Russian Defense Ministry [[w:Sergei Shoigu|Sergei] Shoigu]]'s son-in-law walks around, shaking his ass, while his daughter is opening the Kronstadt forts. Did you make money from these forts? Are you spending your money on these forts? Spend your fucking money on ammunition."

"My advice to the Russian elites — get your lads, send them to war, and when you go to the funeral, when you start burying them, people will say that now everything is fair."

"Then there will be a hard war. I don't know how long it will last. If you do it right, then my forecast is to liberate Donbas in two years, to reach Kiev in three or four. If we mobilize the whole of society now, turn on the production of all ammunition, weapons and everything that is required, make planned production, declare a general mobilization. After all, when we come to mobilization, the mobilized will again prepare for an hour and then go to the front."

"Putin has "cut off communication with me to get me to stop asking for ammunition""

"You have learned a great deal — first of all: how to kill the enemy."

"Here’s the pessimistic scenario: the Ukrainians are given missiles, they train their troops, they no doubt continue their offensive, and they try to counterattack. It’s possible that this counteroffensive is successful in some places and they restore the borders to where they were in 2014 — that could easily happen. They’ll attack Crimea, they’ll try to blow up the Crimean Bridge, they’ll cut off our supply routes. So we need to be ready for a difficult war."

"In a legal sense, Bakhmut has been captured."

"We will kill everyone on the battlefield. Take no more prisoners of war!"

"Russia is on the brink of catastrophe."

"Don’t booze too much, don’t take drugs, don’t rape women — only for love or for money as they say."