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Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual press conference on Thursday in which he answers questions from some journalists and citizens, obviously selected in advance. In over four and a half hours he answered 76 questions, without deviating too much from the regime’s rhetoric and from the things it usually says, which are very often false and propagandistic.
As in the last two end-of-year conferences, the central theme was the war in Ukraine. Putin said the front is “continuously moving” and declined to give a date by which he promises to “expel the Ukrainian army from the region [russa] of Kursk”, which Ukraine has partly occupied since last August. When asked if he would change his decision to invade Ukraine in any way, he replied that he should have decided “earlier” to do so, and the preparatory phase should have started sooner too.
In the rest of the time he repeated the now usual statements about Russia’s security, saying for example that the country “is stronger than two or three years ago, because we no longer depend on anyone”. He then made some reassurances to the population: on the one hand he denied that an economic crisis was underway, but on the other he defined the 9.3 percent annual inflation as “an alarming sign”, although maintaining that it is due to the increase of Russian consumption. Putin also said he had not yet spoken to US President-elect Donald Trump and had not spoken to him in the last four years, but was “ready to do so” in the near future.
A moment from the press conference (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Responding to a question from a journalist from the US broadcaster NBC Putin said he will ask former Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who has received asylum in Russia, for information on the fate of US journalist Austin Tice, kidnapped in Syria twelve years ago. “I’ll ask her, but you and I are adults, we understand, right? Twelve years ago a man disappeared in Syria, 12 years ago, in a war area! Can Assad know what happened to him?” Putin said.
