Putin, eyeing reelection, holds annual news conference and call-in show

MOSCOW - With his armed forces still on the attack in Ukraine and a reelection campaign getting underway at home, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his nation Thursday in a marathon news conference and call-in show for constituents where he quickly declared that the war will continue until Russia achieves its aims.

Conference moderators immediately turned to the war in Ukraine, asking Putin to address one of the most sensitive issues: military mobilization. Putin ruled out another conscription wave, claiming that an aggressive Defense Ministry campaign to attract contract soldiers had succeeded in recruiting 486,000 men and asserting that 1,500 men were enlisting each day.

Putin signaled that he feels confident to push ahead with the invasion, saying there will be peace with Ukraine “only when we achieve our goals,” which he identified as “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of the country. Though ill-defined, Putin made clear that his objectives were tantamount to Kyiv’s capitulation.

“Almost all along the line of contact our armed forces, shall we say modestly, are improving their position, almost all are in an active stage of action and there is an improvement in the position of our troops throughout,” Putin said.

The Russian leader said the Ukrainian counteroffensive “hasn’t panned out” and that he is confident that Western support for Ukraine will eventually collapse.

“Today, Ukraine produces almost nothing,” Putin said referring to military equipment and weapons. “Everything is brought in . . . for free. But the freebies may end at some point and apparently it’s coming to an end little by little.”

The Russian president repeated his false claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is leading a Nazi regime, and he insisted that Russia’s military was destroying the weapons that the United States and other Western nations were supplying to Kyiv.

Early in the show, called “Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin,” he also described the war in Ukraine as “a great tragedy resembling a civil war between brothers,” but he insisted southeastern Ukraine was historically Russian. He again blamed Ukraine, saying Kyiv had refused to accept normal relations with Russia, and also accused the United States and Europe of facilitating the conflict and “leading us into a tragedy.”

Putin’s “Direct Line” call-in show allows ordinary Russians to ask the president to solve issues ranging from leaky plumbing to economic hardship, while the news conference presents a rare opportunity for invited journalists to put questions directly to the Russian leader.

Putin, who is completing his 24th year as Russia’s supreme political leader, has used the heavily staged events to lay out his vision for domestic and foreign policy and to preside with kingly aloofness as journalists vie for his attention and citizens supplicate him for assistance.

Normally, the events take place annually and on separate dates. But in the tumultuous first year of the Ukraine invasion, after repeated battlefield setbacks and a messy military mobilization, Putin did not subject himself to such public exposure.

Last month, however, the Kremlin announced that it would hold the two events simultaneously “in a combined format.” One motive, given the election scheduled for March, appeared to be to showcase Putin’s fifth campaign for president, which he is expected to win easily because the Kremlin controls all major media outlets, has jailed opponents and has severely punished any anti-regime dissent.

The combined media extravaganza was being held in Gostiny Dvor, a historic market space now used as an exhibition and conference hall, close to Red Square - where the military and security services maintain formidable air defenses. Over the past year, the Russian capital has been hit numerous times by drone strikes - including an attack in May on the Kremlin that Russia said targeted Putin but was thwarted. Ukrainian officials denied the assassination attempt.

Even for professed supporters of Putin, the news conference and call-in show highlight his authoritarian, strongman rule and, by contrast, the ineptitude of national, regional and local government institutions.

“For most, this is the only hope and opportunity to solve their most important problems,” Russian state TV anchor Nikolai Zusik said during a recent newscast, inadvertently underscoring Putin’s increasing isolation and the uselessness of Russia’s pervasive bureaucracy.

Russian authorities have cracked down widely on dissent, especially criticism of the war - driving most independent news outlets from the country and jailing political opposition figures who refused to flee.

The rules to enter Thursday’s news conference resembled crossing an international border during the pandemic: a coronavirus test and Flu A and B tests with results sent directly to the Kremlin, a passport, and two forms of press accreditation.

Attendees passed through four security checkpoints and were given a list of 26 banned items, including Nazi paraphernalia, flags, disguises, aerosols, radioactive devices, toxic chemicals, household chemicals, narcotics, animals, drones, bicycles, food, and water bottles, as well as weapons, explosives and pyrotechnics - making clear the only fireworks should come from Putin.

Journalists from far-flung Russian regions were dressed up in garish, attention-grabbing colors or national costumes, aiming to attract the presidential eye so they could be called on for a question. Typically, those queries are about some unresolved parochial issue that the president then promises to address. Journalists were also invited from the occupied regions of Ukraine, which Putin, in violation of international law, has declared to be annexed to Russia.

But having cleared away the liberal-progressive elements of society that opposed Putin’s push for a more conservative and authoritarian Russia, the Kremlin now faces pressure from the wives and mothers of soldiers conscripted to fight in Ukraine during the unpopular mobilization. Many have not returned home since then and effectively have served in trenches for 15 months.

On Thursday, Putin repeated his assertion that Russia was not to blame for the war, and hammered his false description of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2013-14 as resulting in a “coup d’état.” In fact, tens of thousands of Ukrainians protested then President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision, under pressure from Moscow, not to sign political and economic agreements with the European Union that he had promised to sign. With protesters on Kyiv’s main square, Yanukovych fled to Russia.

Ahead of Putin’s event, activists from The Way Home, a group that unites wives and mothers of mobilized Russia fighters, said they had sent hundreds of pleas demanding that mobilized men be returned home - in a bid to take up the Kremlin’s promise that all requests submitted for “Direct Line” will be reviewed and solved.

“Flood them with your messages until the end of the line and blow up their phones,” a post on The Way Home Telegram channel says, urging family members to bombard the Kremlin with demands that Putin formally end the mobilization, which he has never done.

“Will this remain purposely unnoticed? Our patience is running out,” another message said. “Please note that we should not be raising the issues of rotation, vacations, payments, benefits, but the actual demobilization of our men.”

Since it was created in September, the group massed nearly 35,000 members.

Its organizers said that Russian state media outlets have made attempts “to discredit” the group and that law enforcement officers have visited several activists at home to warn them about potential punishments for online posts or for taking part in unsanctioned demonstrations.

According to Russian officials, at least 300,000 men were mobilized in the fall of last year, although that number is widely believed to be an underestimation.

Regardless of what Putin says about the growing discontent among families of Russian soldiers, his general message about the prospects of the war in Ukraine - set to enter its third year at the end of February - was the centerpiece on Thursday.

Last week, Putin confirmed that he will run, paving the way for him to remain in power until 2030. The announcement came from a Russian military officer, who told a group of state media reporters that he had pleaded with Putin to run on behalf of soldiers fighting in Ukraine - and that the president had agreed.

The officer, Lt. Col. Artyom Zhoga, took the reins of the ultranationalist Sparta Battalion in 2022 from his son, who died from injuries sustained in Ukraine.

“In general, it is symbolic that Putin was nominated by people whose children died there,” Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of R. Politik, a Russian political consultancy, who is now based in Paris, wrote in a Telegram post. “I think this is no coincidence and will be used partly as a response to the protest of the wives and mothers of the mobilized.”

“The Kremlin is showing society that there are two types of behavior: true patriots who are ready to give up what is most precious for the sake of the Motherland,” Stanovaya added, “and [those] . . . who do not understand what the country is fighting for.”

Ilyushina reported from Riga, Latvia. Natalia Abbakumova in Riga and Francesca Ebel in Moscow contributed reporting.