- Russian President Vladimir Putin caps each year with an hours-long, choreographed Q&A session.
- Key moments on Thursday covered Russia’s fragile economy, the invasion of Ukraine, and Donald Trump.
- Putin sought to project an image of a powerful, thriving Russia, despite heavy challenges before him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held his marathon annual press conference on Thursday.
During the event, Putin fielded questions from members of the Russian public and journalists on issues ranging from spiking food prices to the war in Ukraine and global instability.
Here are some telling moments.
1) He acknowledged that Russia’s economy is in a bad place
Putin opened the phone-in to discuss Russia’s economy, acknowledging the inflation and high interest rates pummeling the country.
Russia’s key interest rate stands at 21%, while inflation is at 8.9%.
Putin sought to ready the Russian people for more pain, saying inflation could hit 9.5% in 2025.
He said price rises — especially for food — had been an “unpleasant and bad” outcome.
Soaring prices — particularly of eggs — prompted a rare apology from Putin last year.
2) He didn’t take all the blame, though
Putin didn’t take total responsibility for the economic situation.
Per Reuters, he said both the central bank and the Russian federal government — which is formally run not by Putin but by the Russian prime minister — could have done better to stop the economy overheating.
He denied Western sanctions were having a significant impact on the Russian economy.
“They are not a key factor,” Putin claimed.
Alexander NEMENOV / AFP
3) Putin couldn’t say when he would retake captured Russian land
Putin was bullish on his invasion of Ukraine, boasting of recent territorial gains by Russian forces there.
But, unlike last year, he also had to contend with the reality of Ukrainian troops continuing to occupy Russian soil in the Kursk region.
The Kursk attack was the first foreign military incursion into Russia since World War II, and a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin.
One caller to Putin asked when she could return home to Kursk — and Putin couldn’t answer.
“For sure, we will get rid of them” Putin said. He declined to give a date, saying that it would put Russian soldiers at risk.
Troops would “try to deliver on that without regard for their own lives,” he said of what would follow if he gave specifics.
4) He boasted about Russia’s new missile
The Russian president once again claimed that Russia had developed a new ballistic missile that Western defenses were incapable of intercepting.
Russia fired the powerful Oreshnik missile last month at Dnipro, Ukraine. Analysts saw the attack as a thinly disguised threat to the West after the US and its allies allowed Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range missiles.
Ukrainian officials said at the time that the missile was unusually powerful, and Putin claimed Thursday it travels at Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound.
Western air defenses “stands no chance” of intercepting it, Putin said.
Some analysts were more measured in their assessment of the strike. The UK’s Royal United Services Institute wrote in a recent analysis that the deployment of the Oreshnik was “more about political signalling than military utility in the war.”
5) Putin was on the back foot over Syria’s collapse
In response to a question by NBC News, Putin lengthily sought to rebut the idea that the collapse of the government in Syria leaves Russia weakened.
Putin had been a major international backer of the ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad, who fled to Moscow in the face of a rebel advance.
Business Insider reported that the swift collapse had caught Russia off guard, as well as Iran, Assad’s other major supporter.
Putin defended Russia’s support for Assad, claiming that its interventions there succeeded in preventing Syria from becoming a “terroristic enclave” like Afghanistan.
6) He left the door open for Trump
Putin said he was willing to meet President-elect Donald Trump but had not been contacted by Trump’s team about a meeting.
“I am ready to meet him if he wants it,” he says.
Trump has claimed he’ll bring peace to Ukraine by forcing Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate.
It remains unclear what concessions either Ukraine or Russia might be willing to make to end the war.
