Suddenly, Putin is talking about the very low infant-mortality rate. Which is apparently another indicator that the crisis is over.
First phone-in question from a young schoolteacher who gets 16,500 rubles (just under $300) a month. "How am I to survive?" she asks with a smile.
Putin says that young teachers should get less than their experienced colleagues should, but he "doesn’t understand" why that difference is so big. "We will sort it out."
Q: Are we ready to live under sanctions for decades?
A: We’ve been under sanctions throughout our entire history. It’s done to contain Russia.
Question from 8-year old Stepan: "Why haven’t you won against the terrorists yet? We are a powerful state."
Putin Paints Upbeat Picture Of Russian Economy
By RFE/RL
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the country has pulled out of a long recession and that "the economy has moved to a period of growth."
Putin painted an upbeat picture of the Russian economy at the start of his annual televised question-and-answer program, Direct Line, on June 15.
He said that gross domestic product (GDP) had been rising for three consecutive quarters, including the current one, and that industrial production was also up.
At the same time, he said that the number of people living below the poverty line in Russia had grown to 13.5 percent.
And he faced questions about how to get by on low salaries.
Russia fell into a recession in 2014, when world oil prices collapsed and Western countries imposed sanctions on Moscow over its armed seizure of Crimea and involvement in a war in eastern Ukraine that has now killed more than 10,000 people.
For instance, Putin wants "Chinese friends" to open their market to Russian agricultural products.
Putin says there is no cause for the new sanctions against Moscow that are under consideration in the U.S. Congress, and that the aim of Western sanctions is to hold Russia back.
He spoke less than 24 hours after he U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to cement existing economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and impose new ones in response to Moscow's alleged meddling in last year's election campaign.
The amendment passed as part of a larger measure that targets Iran for sanctions, and the overall legislation faces further votes in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Putin said there was no cause to impose new sanctions on Russia and asserted that the initiative was the result of internal U.S. political struggles -- remarks that echoed earlier Russian criticism of Western sanctions.
He said such measures are aimed to "contain Russia" and hold it back.
The United States and European Union have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia over its armed takeover of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its backing for separatists in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine. (w/dpa, Reuters)