Putin's Q&A session to begin at midday on December 19

MOSCOW. Dec 9 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's Q&A session will begin at noon on December 19, questions will be taken from midnight December 8, a statement on the Kremlin Telegram channel said on Saturday.

"Results of Year with Vladimir Putin will be aired at 12 p.m. Moscow time on December 19," the statement said.

The president will be live on air with results of the outgoing year and to answer questions from journalists and residents of the country.

"Anyone can send their question via the program's moskva-putinu.ru website, SMS or MMS message to 0-40-40, or by calling 8-800-200-40-40. Also, questions will be taken via a special mobile application (for more details, visit the program's website)," the statement said.

In addition, text and video questions can be sent via the Vk and Odnoklassniki social media websites. The program's official groups are vk.com/moskvaputinu and ok.ru/moskvaputinu, respectively.

"Questions will be taken from midnight December 8 right until the end of the program on December 19," it said.

This year's Q&A session will again be in a joint format with an end-of-year press conference, the president's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The first time this combined form was tried was during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Putin has held big annual press conferences since 2001. An exception was 2022 when neither a Q&A session, nor a big press conference were held.

In 2020 the first joint format, combining a big press conference and a Q&A session, lasted four hours 29 minutes. In that time Putin answered 68 questions, both from journalists and ordinary Russians.