MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. Three-quarters of Russians (75%) that were surveyed are planning to watch Russian President Vladimir Putin’s question-and-answer session on Thursday, and most of them want to know his stance on social problems, a poll conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center has revealed.
The annual special program, headlined 'Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,' will be televised by Channel One, Rossiya-1, Rossiya-24, NTV, OTR, and Mir TV, simultaneously, the nation's top radio stations Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossiya will broadcast the event at noon on Thursday. The president will be at the Gostiny Dvor studio near the Kremlin and will have the opportunity to connect live with regional heads and ministers on some issues if needed.
"Three-quarters of the respondents (75%) plan to tune into the Direct Line, and 29% will watch it from the beginning to the very end," the pollster reported. Some 30% will find out about Putin’s answers from newspapers, TV and the Internet. And just one in ten Russians won’t watch the program.
Most Russians (65%) are aware that any questions for the president can be submitted by telephone, while another 47% know that they can be also forwarded through SMS and MMS messages. Those polled also answered that they knew that questions might be also sent through Moskva-Putinu and OK Live mobile apps (32%), or the moskva-putinu.ru website (40%). Another 41% are aware that their questions can be submitted through Russia’s two most prominent social media sites, VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki.
More than 1.5 million questions for the Russian president had been registered by 10 a.m. on Thursday ahead of the program, according to the infographics published on the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
The nation’s leading polling agency conducted the survey on June 17 based on phone interviews with 1,600 respondents over the age of 18. The margin of error does not exceed 2.5% at the 95% confidence level.
This will be Putin’s 17th Q&A session. The very first ‘Direct Line with Vladimir Putin’ was held in late 2001. Since then, this renowned event has been held annually, except for 2004 and 2012. Last year, the Q&A marathon took place on June 7.