Russian President Vladimir Putin is to hold his year-end press conference and televised call-in show on Thursday.
The question and answer session for journalists is combined with the television program “Results of the Year,” where citizens can send their own questions to the president.
The two formats were combined for the first time in 2020 and definitively in 2023, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov citing the president's lack of time as justification for the move.
Putin canceled the event entirely in 2022, the first year of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The one-hour TV event is scheduled to begin at 12pm (0900 GMT).
State news agency TASS said more than 1 million questions have already been submitted to the president – not reaching last year's total of 1.5 million.
Most of the questions revolve around the “special military operation,” as Moscow officially calls the attack, and health care, Peskov said.
Poverty, social hardship, and complaints about health care and a lack of infrastructure are recurring themes in the question-and-answer sessions, in which Putin tries to present himself as a problem-solver. .
