Putin to Avoid Call-in Show Format in 2012 – Newspaper

MOSCOW, October 31 (RIA Novosti)-Russian President Vladimir Putin will this year avoid a live call-in show that has been held annually for the past 10 years, a leading Russian business daily quoted Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

“There will be no call-in show this year,” Peskov told Kommersant, adding that the president would field questions “in a different format.”

Peskov said the new format would be announced later. Putin could hold a large-scale press conference in late November, Kommersant reported.

During his last annual live Q&A session in December 2011, which lasted for more than four and a half hours, Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, answered 88 questions.