Putin’s traditional year-end press conference: As it happened

Putin has concluded his press conference, which in keeping with tradition ran for a mammoth four and a half hours. The Russian president is estimated to have discussed over 70 different topics, ranging from the Ukraine conflict and broader geopolitics to intergalactic objects, AI, domestic issues, and the specific problems of everyday citizens.

Putin says that if Kiev is to hold an election, Moscow will demand that Ukrainian citizens currently living in Russia – of which there are between 5 and 10 million, according to various estimates – are also allowed to participate.

”The government in Ukraine must become legitimate, and without an election, this is impossible,” Putin stresses.

Putin says Moscow is prepared to consider guaranteeing security during a vote in Ukraine, or at the very least refrain from strikes deep into Ukrainian territory on election day.

However, he warns that if Kiev tries to use an election as a ploy to win time and halt the advance of Russia’s forces, it would be the “wrong decision.”

Commenting on future elections in Ukraine and demands by Zelensky for security guarantees, Putin notes that Russia has held multiple votes in recent years, including a presidential one in 2024, without any such guarantees from abroad. He says that foreign forces actually tried to disrupt votes in Russia and generate internal stability, recalling that Kiev directly targeted polling stations.

Putin says he is not planning to write any sort of memoirs. “In memoirs, people evaluate themselves. Let other people, if they think it necessary, evaluate my work and the work of my team,” he says.

Putin improvises a time capsule message for future generations:

“We, who lived in Russia in the endless flow of time, in the 20th and 21st centuries, gratefully accepted everything our ancestors had accomplished. We lived like everyone else, everywhere, and always – with our current concerns. But we didn’t stand still. We moved forward. We worked, fought, and struggled. And we did our utmost to solve the problems our time posed. We thought about the future and about you. And if you hold our message in your hands today, it means you still feel part of our shared, endless flow of time. It means that you, too, feel and understand the connection between the times. It means that when we worked, fought, and thought about you, we too lived not in vain and achieved much. We wish you good fortune to always be with us. And we hope that your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be as proud of you as we are of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers.”

Putin’s session featured not only questions, but also a wide flow of ‘vox pop’ messages, ranging from requests to practical concerns and casual remarks.

“Take Kiev, make it fast!” read one SMS. Another asked: “When is the Moon mission due?”

©  RT

Others focused on domestic issues. “Why do we need an indebted Avtovaz that produces cars more expensive and worse than Chinese ones?” one message said.

©  RT

A lighter note came from another sender: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, it’s already Friday – maybe time to grab a beer?”

Putin says over 700,000 Russian troops are currently on the front line, and that most of them are young men, many born in the ‘90s.

AI presents the danger that children will not seek to understand or solve problems themselves, and will simply turn to chatbots for answers, Putin says. He stresses that the education process must be structured to ensure that core issues are addressed and practiced in classrooms, forcing students to engage their brains.

Satanism, sorcerers, and occult services are “complete nonsense” that confuse people and cause significant harm to citizens, Putin says, vowing to order regulators to pay closer attention to the issue.