MOSCOW -- Alternately pugnacious and conciliatory, with his customary swagger and salty language, President Vladimir Putin held forth on a broad array of topics in his traditional year-end news conference on Thursday, even throwing in a glowing assessment of Donald Trump.
Putin drew applause from the crowd of journalists when he lashed out at Turkey for having shot down a Russian bomber, daring the Turks to try it again with Russia's advanced air defense system in place and surmising that perhaps the Turks "wanted to lick the Americans in one place."
Yet he praised the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to find a political solution to the war in Syria and admitted that there were Russian personnel in Ukraine, although no regular soldiers.
In the wide-ranging, more than three-hour event, Putin offered rare hints about his closely guarded family life, saying his two grown daughters were living in Russia and "taking the first steps of their careers."
Not surprisingly, he threw in a few curve balls. He rose to the defense of Sepp Blatter, the embattled president of soccer's world governing body, FIFA, who is under criminal investigation for corruption, saying Blatter should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
And he even inserted himself into the Republican primary contest in the United States, speaking highly of Trump in remarks after the news conference ended. "There is no doubt that he is a very bright and talented man," the Russian leader said. "It is not our business to assess his merits; that is up to the U.S. voters. But he is an absolute leader of the presidential race."
Beneath the pyrotechnics, Putin seemed most concerned with driving home the point to his domestic audience that Russia's battered economy had bottomed out, an indication that Russia's recession had his full attention.
Peppered with dozens of questions, Putin lingered, as he did at last year's session, on those that allowed him to reassure Russians that their living standards were not imperiled.
He went out of his way, in several answers, to say that Russia's economy had hit bottom this year, and that it was now bouncing back — though independent economists and even Russia's central bank, in a report released this month, have contested that view.
The gross domestic product, a broad measure of the economy's health, is projected to fall 3.7 percent this year but will grow by 0.7 percent next year, Putin said. It would pick up more in following years, he added.
Real incomes, he conceded, are falling, but other indications of social well-being, such as the birthrate, are up, he said.
Putin backpedaled on his prediction a year ago that Russia would pull out of its current slump within two years, and blamed the tumble in oil prices. "After this fall in prices in energy resources, all the indicators slipped," he said.
Despite the recession, Putin's popularity remains extraordinarily high, with support above 80 percent in some polls. While the economy is biting at home, even as Putin pursues a swaggering foreign policy, the hardship has not yet translated into widespread political discontent.
Surveys and the answers to questions posed to focus groups show that the pillars of Putin's popularity shifted in early 2014, just before the current downturn. Russians now say they admire Putin more for a role as a "protector" from external threats than for the role of "provider," a study by an influential Russian sociologist, Mikhail E. Dmitriyev, concluded this year.
Putin also offered positive signals for a round of talks on a Syrian peace plan scheduled to take place in New York on Friday, saying he could largely support the U.S. plan described by Kerry in their meeting this week in Moscow.
Russia under Putin has deployed its military in several countries, and at one point on Thursday the president suffered a slip of the tongue in answering a question about Georgia, where Russia fought a war in 2008 and later recognized two separatist regions.
"Concerning the territorial integrity of Ukraine, ah, excuse me, of Georgia … " he said, going on to say that the breakup of Georgia was the fault of that country's former leaders, not of Russia.
Speaking of his daughters, he said that they "have never lived in the limelight" but that they speak three European languages that they use "in their daily work." He did not directly deny reports published this year that his older daughter runs a program at Moscow State University.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.