Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold an annual press conference on Thursday, December 17. This year, due to the restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, it will be held in a new format – via video conferencing, and elements of a direct line will be added, during which the head of state answers questions from Russians.
As the press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov said earlier, during the press conference, Putin will be at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo and will see and hear everyone who asks him questions.
As for the elements of the direct line, the questions for it are traditionally collected through a special site and an application for mobile devices. Volunteers of the All-Russian Popular Front are involved in this work. This year, Russians can again send their questions to the president not only in text form, but also in multimedia format, for example, by recording a video.
Russian TV channels allocated three hours of their airtime for Putin’s press conference.
The event, which will start at noon, will be broadcast live by the TV channels Russia 1, Russia 24, Channel One, NTV and Mir, as well as radio stations Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii. Sign translation will be conducted live on the Public Television of Russia (OTR) TV channel, as well as on the OTR website. At the Moscow World Trade Center (WTC), the press conference will also be translated into English, French and German.
A total of 774 journalists were accredited for the press conference.
On November 27, the Kremlin press service announced that a major press conference of the Russian President would take place on December 17. The Kremlin noted that due to the difficult epidemic situation, the event will be held via videoconference.