WATCH: Russian President Putin Held Annual 'Direct Line' Q&A Session

The Russian President held his traditional annual "Direct Line" session with the country's citizens for the 16th time. Vladimir Putin answered the dozens of questions in the course of the Q&A session, which lasted four hours 20 minutes.

Call centers have received more than 2.5 million questions for the annual "Direct Line" Q&A session with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the event's organizers. The questions were sorted into categories, including sports, tourism, business, sanctions, agriculture, the 2018 FIFA World Cup, economy, ecology and Russia's regions.

The event began at 12:06 local time (09:06 GMT) and saw Putin answering various questions from Russian citizens. As of 15:30 p.m. Moscow time (12:30 GMT) on Thursday, call centers received at total of 2,580,929 questions, including through social media and special applications, organizers said.

The annual Q&A session has been carried out by the Kremlin since 2001.

In 2013, Putin broke his own record with the session lasting 4 hours and 47 minutes.

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