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Vladimir Putin Gives Annual Russia News Conference Vladimir Putin Gives Annual Russia News Conference
(about 2 hours later)
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia holds his year-end news conference on Thursday in Moscow. The annual question-and-answer session comes almost three months after Mr. Putin inserted himself into international efforts to resolve the Syrian civil war. He is likely to face questions about his decision to intervene, his military’s strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and the sometimes contentious diplomacy that has ensued. Also likely to come up: the conflict in Ukraine, relations with Europe and domestic issues like the stalled Russian economy. MOSCOW — A typically confident and, at times, combative President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday at his traditional year-end news conference that the Russian economy, battered by the oil price slump, had reached a floor and would rebound in 2016 and in subsequent years.
Andrew E. Kramer and Ivan Nechepurenko, correspondents for The New York Times in Moscow, are attending the year-end news conference and providing updates via Twitter. Their report will be available after the question-and-answer session ends. Mr. Putin also praised the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to find a political solution in Syria and admitted that there were Russian personnel in Ukraine but no regular soldiers. “We never said there were not people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere,” he said.
Mr. Putin drew applause from the crowd of journalists for lashing out at Turkey for having shot down a Russian bomber, calling it “the act of an enemy” and surmising that perhaps the Turks “wanted to lick the Americans in one place.”
In the wide-ranging, more than three-hour event, he even offered hints about the closely guarded secrets of his family life, saying his two grown daughters were living in Russia and “taking the first steps of their careers.”
He also praised Sepp Blatter, the embattled president of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, who is under criminal investigation for corruption, saying he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But time and again, Mr. Putin returned to bread-and-butter matters of Russia’s slumping pensions and wages, an indication that Russia’s recessionary economy has his full attention.
Peppered with dozens of questions, Mr. Putin lingered on those that allowed him to reassure Russians that their living standards would improve.
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 by 3.7 percent this year but will grow by 0.7 percent next year, Mr. 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.
Mr. Putin backpedaled on his prediction a year ago that Russia would pull out of its current slump within two years, and blamed the oil price tumble. “Yes, after this fall in prices in energy resources, all the indicators slipped,” he said.
Putin’s popularity remains extraordinarily high, in some polls measured above 80 percent, despite the recession. While the economy is biting at home, even as Mr. 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 Mr. Putin’s popularity shifted in early 2014, just before the current downturn. Russians now admire Mr. Putin more for a role as a “protector” from external threats than for a role of “provider,” a study by an influential Russian sociologist, Mikhail E. Dmitriyev, concluded this year.
Mr. 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 American plan described by Mr. Kerry in their meeting this week in Moscow.
With Russia under Mr. Putin having deployed its military in several countries, at one point Mr. Putin suffered a slip of the tongue in answering a question about Georgia, where Russia fought a war in 2008, and then recognized two separatist regions.
“Concerning the territorial integrity of Ukraine, ah, excuse me, of Georgia,” he said, going on to say the breakup of Georgia was the fault of that country’s former leaders, not Russia.
In speaking of his daughters, he said they “have never lived in the limelight” but 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.