Date of Putin’s 2024 Q&A marathon announced

The traditional event is scheduled for December 19, the Kremlin has said

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a traditional long-format press conference with citizens, national and international media on December 19, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on Friday.

The president’s office organizes events of this kind almost every year, with Putin spending several hours each time responding to questions from different parts of Russia asked by regular citizens and members of the press corps.

The collection of questions from the public for the upcoming Q&A session will start this weekend, Peskov told the media. The Kremlin will use AI technologies to sort incoming questions and determine which issues are of most interest to Russians, the official added.

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In the past, Putin spoke to the general public and to journalists on separate occasions, but in recent years the two types of marathon events have been merged into a single session.

In 2023, the press conference was held in mid-December and was named ‘Results of the Year’. Some 2 million texts and calls were submitted to the Kremlin for the event, including a video recording featuring a Putin look-alike created by a university student from St. Petersburg using ‘deep fake’ technology.