President Putin to Hold Annual End-of-Year Press Conference in Moscow

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his traditional end-of-year press conference, which is expected to gather over 500 journalists representing national and international news agencies, in Moscow.

The conference will start at 12:00 p.m. local time, or 9:00 a.m. GMT, and will be broadcast live.

Last year, the press conference was held for the first time via video link due to COVID-19 restrictions. This year the event will return to the traditional in-person format, though the attending journalists are required to take several PCR tests as a precaution.

The number of journalists accredited for the conference is 507, which is nearly two times lower than in previous years because of the pandemic. Aside from Russian news agencies, including those with foreign agent status, the conference will be attended by representatives of leading foreign media outlets, such as AFP, Bloomberg, Le Figaro, Euronews, Xinhua, Le Monde, AP, DW, Financial Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, and the ВВС.

The practice of holding a large annual news conference was introduced by Putin in 2001 during his first term as Russian president. The president traditionally spends an average of three hours to field questions about the most pressing regional and international issues. In 2008, the conference lasted a record-setting 4 hours and 40 minutes.