MOSCOW, Dec 20 — Irina Efimova travelled six hours by plane from remote Siberia to Moscow, to be among 500 journalists at the Russian president’s set-piece annual press conference.

“It’s important to come and see Vladimir Vladimirovich!” she said, overwhelmed with emotion, at the event, where Vladimir Putin played the roles of wartime leader, economist—and even matchmaker.

“Every journalist dreams of seeing this conference from the inside,” Efimova, a journalist with a local television channel in Yakutia, told AFP.

To mark the occasion, she adorned her hair with the bastynga, a traditional Yakut silver headdress.

Journalists donned bright national costumes or held placards with catchy phrases to draw the attention of Putin’s longtime spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who moderated the Q&A.

Russia’s full national diversity was on show in the audience, from bearded Chechens to Yakuts and Tatars in traditional costume, alongside foreign correspondents.

Peskov said some were from “friendly countries” and “unfriendly” ones—those that support Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.

Russian or foreign, every journalist had to take a Covid test the day before the conference—a rarity elsewhere in the world but routine for journalists covering Vladimir Putin.

“I’m on my 19th test,” said one resigned Russian journalist, declining to give his name or say which outlet he represented.

 ‘Hang up immediately!’ 

Putin, who has held 22 similar press conferences throughout his quarter of a century rule, spoke with seemingly little effort for more than four and a half hours—a “record”, according to Peskov.

Four years into his full-scale offensive on Ukraine, Putin claimed that Russian forces are advancing “along the entire line of contact”.

When it came to diplomatic efforts to end the war, Putin said “the ball is entirely and fully in the court” of Kyiv and its European backers”.

Pavel Zarubin, an energetic state TV reporter who closely covers Putin, asked the president about what he said was Europe’s “fanatical support of the Kyiv regime”.

Questions came in turn from other journalists and “ordinary Russian citizens” who “submitted more than three million questions to us”, added Zarubin, who also hosts the event.

Among them was one from Christina, whose husband was killed in Ukraine in January 2024 and who wondered why her widow’s pension was taking so long to arrive.

Putin promised that her case will be prioritised.

Swiftly changing topics, the president warned against phone scams, exclaiming, “Hang up immediately!” Then, he talked about aliens and the lowering of the Russian central bank’s key rate.

He went on, blasting the decline in Russia’s reading rates, saying: “In the past, we used to take pride in the USSR being the world’s most reading country.”

Adding to the absurdity of the moment, Putin, beaming, congratulated a journalist who proposed to his girlfriend during the press conference.

His fiancée, Olechka, accepted the proposal, the journalist said later. — AFP