Photo credit: kremlin.ru (CC BY 4.0)
The annual conference of the Russian President Vladimir Putin took place on Thursday, December 23. In 3 hours 56 minutes, he answered 55 questions. The conference became the 17th in a row, RIA Novosti reports.
Traditionally, key issues, including the economic situation in the country, the fight against the pandemic, Russia's position in the international arena, were discussed during the conference.
The President spoke about relations with Ukraine. They worsened in 2014, the head of state recalled. He noted that when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Russia did not object to the fact that some historical territories broke away from it. But in 2014, a coup d'etat was staged in Kiev. The issue of Crimea arose only after that, Vladimir Putin specified. He has no doubt that it was impossible to refuse protection to people. ''We could not have acted otherwise,'' the Russian President is convinced.
During the press conference, Putin thanked the authorities of Kazakhstan for supporting the Russian language in the republic. He recalled that Kazakhstan is "a Russian-speaking country in the full sense of the word." According to the president, he is grateful to the country's authorities for their attention to the development of the Russian language.
