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December 17, 2020. Russian President Vladimir Putin via videoconference participates in the annual press conference at the World Trade Center on Krasnaya Presnya - Sputnik International

Live Updates: Russian President Putin Holds Year-End Press Conference

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The Russian president is speaking via a video link and is taking questions not only from journalists but also ordinary Russians, after the 2020 "Direct Line" Q&A session was scrapped due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding his annual press conference with a "Direct Line" session, answering dozens of questions from journalists and ordinary people from around the country.

This year, the president is taking questions live from his Novo-Ogaryovo residence due to the coronavirus pandemic, while journalists and photographers are located in several press centres.

During the conference, the 16th of its kind, Putin traditionally answers questions related to Russia’s economy, social policies, national projects, and problems of certain regions, as well as questions regarding the country's foreign policy.

The final press conference of the year is expected to take 3-4 hours, as it has since 2004.

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13:44 GMT 17.12.2020

Speaking about Joe Biden's election, President Putin stated there will hardly be anything unexpected in bilateral ties after his inauguration. When cheekily asked if he will miss German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin pointed out that she is not leaving yet.

The issue of vaccine development and herd immunity was again brought up: referring to the importance of one-dose inoculations, the president noted that specialists from the Gamaleya research centre are planning to design a so-called "light vaccine" with one injection that requires a shorter time for antibodies to form.

Another question journalists drew Vladimir Putin's attention to is the fate of treason suspect Ivan Safronov, a former military journalist and now an aide to the chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who was detained on 7 July on suspicions that he allegedly handed classified data on Russia's defence sector to a special service of a NATO country. Vladimir Putin says he has no enemies among Russia's authorities, and so there should be "no conspiracy theories" with this regard. The president went on to stress that it is up to the investigators and court to make their conclusions on the matter.

13:38 GMT 17.12.2020
13:23 GMT 17.12.2020
12:50 GMT 17.12.2020
12:50 GMT 17.12.2020
12:35 GMT 17.12.2020

The Russian president stated that the country has long been striving for friendship with its western partners, but has to take measures and react accordingly if assurances about NATO not spreading eastwards are not fulfilled.

12:25 GMT 17.12.2020
12:12 GMT 17.12.2020

Commenting on the cultural, including religious, differences in Europe, Vladimir Putin pointed to the fiasco of multiculturalism there, while asserting that in Russia, this format has taken hold on its own.

"The project of multiculturalism has suffered a fiasco, a failure, which had to be admitted by many of those who called for this project and its realisation. In Russia, it took hold historically, across the centuries, and we appreciate this a lot", Putin told the audience.

12:07 GMT 17.12.2020

Commenting on his ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin acknowledged that they don't always see eye to eye, but stressed that the Turkish president is "a man of his word".

“I often have diverging views on certain questions with President Erdogan, sometimes even opposing views. But he is a person who keeps his word, he is a man. He does not wag his tail, if he considers something advantageous for his country then he goes until the end", Putin said, responding to a question about working with world leaders asked at his annual press conference.

11:55 GMT 17.12.2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded a question from a notorious singer, Sergei "Shnur" Shnurov, during his annual press conference about curbs on using profane language in public, to which he replied that Russian was better and richer than just obscenities.

"Look at popular movies, the classics of Soviet filmography … The Russian language is quite rich and allows you to express ideas without resorting to obscenities”, Putin told Sergei "Shnur" Shnurov, who represented the RTVI media outlet at the press conference.

The president thanked the 47-year-old musician and songwriter for not using profanities at the press conference "as you sometimes do on the stage”.

11:39 GMT 17.12.2020
11:26 GMT 17.12.2020

President Vladimir Putin said that everything had its time in response to a question why the Russian Constitution was amended in 2020 and not some other time.

"You know, everything happens in its own time, everything has its time”, Putin told the press conference.

Putin recalled that the 1993 Constitution was adopted amid a domestic crisis that saw open combat and casualties on the streets of Moscow, adding that its adoption had played a stabilising role at the time.

He went on to say that much has since changed, and the amendments were overdue, while the constitution's basic structure remains unchanged.

11:14 GMT 17.12.2020
11:12 GMT 17.12.2020
10:51 GMT 17.12.2020
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual end-of-year news conference, held online in a video conference mode, at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia - Sputnik International

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the restoration of ties with Russia depends entirely on the Ukrainian side.

“In my view, the resolution [of the Donbass conflict] is inevitable, it will happen sooner or later, the question is when? In large part, this depends on the current Ukrainian authorities”, the president said.

"When they take office, they rely upon the majority of the population, of the electorate, but when they assume power, they start to hesitate a bit and constantly nod to the extreme nationalistic forces. They, perhaps, lack political courage, and the process freezes", the president pointed out.

10:24 GMT 17.12.2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday laid out a plan to slash the number of people living below the poverty line in Russia in half over the coming decade.

"The plan as such, is to decrease the number of those living below the poverty line from 13.5 percent today to 6.5 percent of people whose income is below the living wage", Putin said at his annual press conference.

10:21 GMT 17.12.2020

Putin said the same people are behind the reports of Russian hackers in 2016 and now, the US State Department in particular.

 

10:20 GMT 17.12.2020

President Putin referred to publications about those ostensibly behind the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny not as an investigation, but rather a “legalisation of materials from American intelligence".

He referred to the journalistic investigations on the Navalny case published the other day in a number of media outlets as an attempt to attack the country’s top officials.

10:18 GMT 17.12.2020

The president said US-Russia bilateral ties had been hostage to American policies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasised that US President-Elect Joe Biden is a knowledgeable politician and expressed hope that he will be engaged in solving problems concerning US-Russia relations.

"We proceed from the fact that the US president-elect will understand what happens, he is a knowledgeable man both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. We expect that all the problems that have appeared [in US-Russia relations] or some of them will be solved by the new US administration”, Putin told the presser.

10:08 GMT 17.12.2020
09:48 GMT 17.12.2020

“As for the origins of the coronavirus, there are a lot of rumours. I wouldn’t like to comment on this speaking to the whole country and the world, even more so since we don’t see any proof of any accusations against anyone", the president said.

“We should not now be looking for the guilty [parties], but join efforts to fight the issue, this will be the most appropriate direction of our cooperation", he emphasised.

09:46 GMT 17.12.2020

Russia currently lacks the needed equipment to produce enough vaccines for mass immunisation, but will scale up its production facilities, the president asserted.

09:36 GMT 17.12.2020

"Specialists tell us those vaccines that are going into civil circulation are intended for citizens of a certain age group. There are currently no vaccines for my age group ... I will definitely do this [receive the vaccine] as soon as it becomes possible", Putin, who is 68, told his annual news conference.

09:29 GMT 17.12.2020

He said Russia is among the world's top 3 nations in terms of COVID-19 testing, and, importantly, at the forefront of the production of a coronavirus vaccine. A massive vaccination programme is due to kick off ahead of schedule, from 1 January.

The president went on to say he is confident that Russia will effectively join efforts with other countries to work on the production of vaccines.

09:19 GMT 17.12.2020

Putin has noted no healthcare system in the world was ready for a problem of the scale akin to the COVID-19 pandemic. The president went on to state that the manufacturing of masks in Russia, for instance, had increased 20-fold since the onset of the pandemic.

 

09:15 GMT 17.12.2020

"I would like to draw your attention to a definitely positive element of economic development, 70 percent of the Russian budget is now being formed not at the expense of oil and gas revenues. It means that we have, not totally, but started to get off the oil and gas needle ... Although our dependence [on oil and gas revenues] is still quite high, and we should take this into account", Putin told his audience.

09:13 GMT 17.12.2020
09:04 GMT 17.12.2020

Vladimir Putin said the COVID pandemic had resulted in severe drops in production. There have been a lot of problems, the president said. The outgoing year has brought both pluses and minuses, but the pandemic has been the major problem.

09:01 GMT 17.12.2020
08:56 GMT 17.12.2020

President Vladimir Putin's presser is organised in a completely different way this year due to pandemic restrictions: a chessboard sitting arrangement will apply, as well as strict requirements regarding wearing protective masks and gloves.

The Kremlin’s press service has also reminded about the prohibition of banners this time, as journalists have hitherto traditionally competed to attract the president’s attention more.

The presser’s participants have been divided into groups, with no more than 247 journalists allowed into the studio of World Trade Center in Moscow, which housed over 1,500 people in previous years.

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