Putin has held power for nearly 24 years and announced last week he is running for reelection. Before becoming the president, he worked as an officer of the KGB intelligence agency.
During an annual televised Direct Line question-and-answer session with Russian citizens, the 71-year-old president said that apart from his “main dream” of becoming an intelligence officer, he wanted to become a pilot, state-owned TASS news agency quoted him as saying. To subscribe please click tau.id/2iy6f and access our live channel.
He added, “I talked about it. Each person at different stages of their life has a different attitude to the values that surround them. I wanted to be a pilot. But the main [dream], already in high school, I wanted to be an intelligence officer, and, as you know, I became one.”
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The traditional question-and-answer session was combined this year with Putin’s year-end press conference with Russian and international journalists. The meeting lasted four hours and three minutes. Putin responded to more than 80 appeals and questions from citizens and journalists.
Replying to a video question about whether he had doppelgangers from his “virtual replica”– a student from St. Petersburg- the head of state said that he was the only one who could speak in his voice. Adding that it was the first time he had seen someone who looked so much like himself, he said, “This is my first doppelganger, by the way.”
n 2020, the event lasted 4 hours and 30 minutes. The record for the duration of a direct line (as a separate format) was set in 2013 at 4 hours and 47 minutes, while the record for an annual press conference is 4 hours and 40 minutes (2008), according to the report.