Direct Line with Vladimir Putin is as useful as a census or a referendum

Kremlin sums up results of the Direct Line with Vladimir Putin. The Russian people send Vladimir 2 million 826 thousand questions. The most active were those who have already retired, while pupils and students were only in the fifth place. According to the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the hacker also showed a great interest in the Q&A session and tried to hack the app for video calls.

Meanwhile, as the deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank from 2002 to 2003, Konstantin Korishchenko, believes, "this 'line' can be compared with events such as a census or a kind of referendum. Because the amount of information that flows even in the form of questions, statistically, sociologically, economically, if it is properly processed, and I'm sure it will be processed properly, will give a very accurate picture of the current state of the country. Including the economic state. And in this sense, which specific questions were answered and which were not is not as important as the spectrum of these questions."

Comparing Putin's answers to previous year, Korischenko stated: "For me, it was clearly demonstrated by the answer to the question: are we having a white stripe or black stripe? And if you remember, in the previous 'line', there was a joke about the fact that we should not go along, and that it is better to go across. And today there was the answer that we are in a so-called gray stripe. In other words, we moved from the black, but are still not in the white. And this clearly reflects the current state of the economy, which is demonstrated by almost all the economic indicators, when it is clear that the decline is over. That statistically we reached a certain level. But then the question arises – when will we start to ascend it? And how long will it take? Perhaps this message, that this year we definitely realized that all the acute phases are over, and we must move on to positive construction, rather than deal with the crisis as such – this is the most important point. And the second point, an example of the reserves was cited, there were several, when it was said that even if we do nothing, our durability reserves are enough. But most importantly, in this case, we should not relax and expect that everything will resolve itself, through oil prices or something else. Expressing everything briefly, I think the main message is – let's forget about the crisis, let's think about what we will build in the next phase of our economic development."