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Kremlin to start receiving questions for Putin’s Q&A session at 12 noon

Putin will answer Russians' questions for the 13th time during the upcoming session also known as the "Direct Line". The annual live ‘interview’ will be held on April 16

© Donat Sorokin/ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/. Kremlin has promised to start receiving questions for a nationwide question and answer session with Russian President Vladimir Putin at 12 noon on Thursday. The annual live ‘interview’ will be held on April 16.

Putin will answer Russians' questions for the 13th time during the upcoming session also known as the "Direct Line". The Kremlin press service is to announce phone numbers and other details later on Thursday.

Dmitry Peskov, the presidential press secretary, told reporters that Russians’ questions to the president would be processed till "the last seconds of the Direct Line via all the possible channels of communication."

"Anyone can ask questions on the [presidential] website, can ask a video question using any mobile device or the app called ‘Moscow to Putin’ which has been made for different operating systems," he said admitting that last year the registration procedure had been rather complicated but this year it was simplified and people could register on social networks automatically.

Along with this, people "can send text and picture messages to the president," Peskov said.

Mobile television studios will be operating in various regions around Russia and people will have an opportunity to ask their president a live question.

Earlier, Peskov said that Crimea like any other Russian region was likely to host one of these studios.

The presidential spokesman believes that collecting questions during a whole week "will enable us to have an absolutely full picture on the whole geography of Russia, on the issues that worry citizens, on the problems they have and on their attitudes to these or other events."

Last year the talk focused on the situation around Crimea and on the Ukraine crisis. These topics are expected to remain in the spotlight of this year’s session although economic issues, in particular, the rouble rate, oil prices, anti-Russian sanctions and anti-crisis measures, are believed to become predominant.

Putin's first question and answer session was held in 2001 and lasted two and a half hours.

In all, his 12 question and answer sessions lasted for some 36 hours.

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