Quote Originally Posted by Soft sign View Post
The Russian sentences you give are correct.
There is no logical inconsistency in the Russian way of dealing with the tenses, it’s just a different way.
A dependent clause in Russian uses tenses relative to the tense of the main clause in such cases...
You probably meant "irrelative". The reference point at the time is temporary shifted to the moment when the reported speech was spoken. The time when we report about the speech doesn't matter.