Vladimir Putin’s four-and-a-half-hour troll

Every year, Vladimir Putin gives a marathon town hall event that lasts for hours. Every year, I feel compelled to watch. Every year, I wonder if it will be the last time I do, as these have become increasingly formulaic, but there is always something in them that rewards watching. (Or so I tell myself.)

Originally, there were two such events a year: a mammoth end-of-year press conference and then ‘Direct Line,’ a kind of online town hall at which Putin addresses a selection of questions (more than two million this year) posed by ordinary Russians. Of course, the questions and questioners are carefully chosen, but even so, there was the scope for occasional surprises and embarrassments. Putin himself seemed increasingly pained by it, so since last year, the two events have been merged into ‘A Year in Review with Vladimir Putin’, that this year lasted four and a half hours.