President Vladimir Putin sought to use his end-of-year press conference to convince Russians and the world that he was confident in himself, in the people’s favor, and in Ukraine’s defeat at the start of his fifth presidential campaign.
Yet during Thursday’s marathon event, Putin, 71, appeared to be going through the motions, feigning reactions and avoiding uncomfortable questions, highlighting the dissonance between the Kremlin’s reality and that of the rest of Russia.
In past years, many officials in the Kremlin, the government, and the regions would informally watch the televised press conference, in real-time.
For Putin’s first press conference since sending troops into Ukraine and his first to be combined with his “Direct Line” call-in, some allowed themselves not to sit in front of the screen for the entire four hours.
“I didn’t even watch the chief’s [a nickname for Putin common among Russian officials] speech today,” a government official, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to give public comments to the press, told The Moscow Times.
“I only heard a joke about chicken eggs [‘eggs’ is a double entendre for ‘testicles’ in Russian] from my colleagues in the hallway. And nothing else!” she said, referring to a question to Putin about the rising price of the staple food.
Two other Russian government officials told The Moscow Times that they did not watch the live broadcast but instead followed along through updates on the Telegram messaging app.
Both claimed they had watched the broadcast of Putin’s conference on television in past years.
An employee from the construction and housing ministry told The Moscow Times that he and some of his colleagues watched the president’s speech on TV in its entirety on Thursday.
“Our leader has really aged. And the format itself, where he rushes through figures and facts, is already overused. Personally, I didn’t hear anything new this time,” the employee said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared his comments could be seen as “discrediting” the authorities, which risks administrative or even criminal liability.
Putin himself has grown tired of his annual press conferences and “Direct Line” programs, two Kremlin officials have repeatedly told The Moscow Times over the past five years.
But because these events have become a tradition, Putin is stuck with them.
Last year, Putin canceled the annual press conference and his Federal Assembly address as he faced a domestic backlash for the September 2022 mobilization, the Russian military retreated from Kherson and Ukrainian drones targeted Russian military and civilian facilities on the mainland.
As a result, the Kremlin needed to make up for the embarrassments of 2022 and send a positive signal to Russians who expect Putin to run a short, fast-paced campaign as he seeks a fifth presidential term.
“That’s why they decided to make it a mandatory program: No less than four hours of Putin live on air in good news incubator mode,” a source close to the Kremlin told The Moscow Times.
An insider from the ruling, pro-Kremlin United Russia party confirmed this.
Putin’s main task in the three months before the election is to exclusively discuss positive developments and inspire voters while brushing over the negative. He appeared uncomfortable in this role, repeating several times that he was not saying anything new.
All the questions, as usual, were staged in advance by the Kremlin.
“One of the most sensitive and undesirable topics is the protests of family members of mobilized soldiers who have been at the front for over a year without rotation,” the source close to the Kremlin said.
The sensitivity of this issue and the fact that the Kremlin still lacks a response to it was publicly confirmed Thursday by a pro-Kremlin propagandist.
In addition, there was zero tolerance for questions on jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny and death in a plane crash, media censorship, or the persecution of anti-war figures, The Moscow Times learned from its sources.
But to give the impression that there were no off-limits topics, the Kremlin brought back a tried-and-true technique: several critical questions were displayed in large print on the studio’s digital screens as Putin spoke.
“It was purposely selected in advance, it was pre-moderated, and it was published in order to feed the Telegram channels and independent media,” a person familiar with the preparation of the press conference told The Moscow Times.
The presence of these questions “sort of existed, but the president didn’t say a word about it. It turned out to be two parallel realities.”
Putin’s ability to convincingly convey sincerity when addressing Russians’ problems has decreased over his two-decade rule, Rostislav Murzagulov, a former associate of Radiy Khabirov, the head of Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan, told The Moscow Times.
“Under Putin, a lot of things in Russia have turned into simulacra, according to [Jan] Baudrillard,” said Murzagulov, who is now in exile, referring to the French philosopher whose work explored the boundaries between reality and simulation.
“We saw one of them today.”
