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Putin’s Q&A session receives 1.7 million questions — Peskov

Vladimir Putin's Direct Line Q&A session will take place on Thursday, April 16, at noon, Moscow time

Russian President Vladimir Putin Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Russian President Vladimir Putin

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. The number of questions addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of his question-and-answer marathon, to be telecast live on Thursday, April 16, has exceeded 1.7 million, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

"By now there have been 1.2 million phone calls, 24,000 MMS and 285,000 SMS messages, 6,500 videos and 190,000 e-mails sent to the website," he announced.

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"Today is the last day of preparations for the Direct Line," Peskov said, adding that the event was a very time- and effort-consuming affair.

"Each Direct Line involves a tremendous amount of work done by a large number of organizations, companies and individuals," Peskov said. He recalled it was a joint project of two national television channels - Channel One and VGTRK.

"Many people were involved in the preparatory work: IT specialists, call centre operators talking to phone callers live, those who process SMS messages and videos; decorators and lighting specialists," Peskov said.

He believes that "most important is the processing of this mass of messages and their classification, because this is the main feature of the Direct Line.

"It gives the head of state a chance to feel the pulse of the nation - everything is clear to the naked eye," Peskov said about the problems Russian people were sharing with the president. "Some most typical messages are handed over to agencies and organizations concerned."

Peskov kept quiet about who of the high-profile personalities and celebrities would be invited to the Direct Line studio.

"By tradition we never announce that. You will see everything tomorrow," he told the media. The Kremlin spokesman refrained from mentioning the details of the most interesting questions addressed to the president.

"Interesting questions and interesting details are many. I believe it would be wrong to disclose them before the Direct Line," Peskov said.

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Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov

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