MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is very upbeat on scientific and engineering progress, but still prefers the special hotline phone to any of the modern gadgets. He shared his ideas on that score in an interview for the TASS special projects entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin."

Asked about his view on the booming market of IT devices, including smartphones, Putin said that progress in science and engineering was unstoppable.

"Technological progress cannot be stopped, nor should it be. We won’t do this," he promised.

Replying to a question on whether this progress caused him some discomfort, Putin said: "I feel at ease because I do not use any of these devices. I merely have other opportunities."

He added that sometimes he used smartphones to make phone calls. In such cases, his subordinates provided him with any needed gadgets, but situations like that were not frequent.

"It is far easier for me to use a special phone line to be connected to any number," Putin explained.

At the end of 2018, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel that Putin did not use a smartphone. He explained that "good old encrypted telephone lines senior government officials use for communication will outlive all smartphones." Also, Peskov described the habit of using smartphones as "voluntary exhibitionism" and readiness to "put everything on public display." This is utterly impossible when it concerns Russia’s president, according to Peskov.

Episode 5 of the video interview is available at https://putin.tass.ru/en.