-- After 3 hours and 40 minutes, it's over.
-- Economic questions dominated the early portion of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual televised question-and-answer session, followed by queries about Russia's foreign relations with countries such as Turkey, Ukraine, and Syria.
-- One of the first questions put to Putin concerned rising prices for groceries and other necessities. Putin said that he understands that people are being hurt by inflation.
-- Putin was asked -- reportedly by a 12-year-old girl -- who he would save from drowning first: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the leaders of two countries with which Russia currently has badly strained relations.
Before this year’s “Direct Line” even starts, a construction worker from Vostok Cosmodrome, Anton Tyurishev, planned to organize a protest to draw attention to his comments last year in the same setting where he highlighted his unpaid wages. According to Tyurishev, he is still owed money. He has now been arrested.
