For those who missed it, here are all 3+ hours of Russian president Putin’s 2017 live Q&A with the word’s press. This year he took questions from Russian mainstream media, from opposition outlets such as Echo Moscow and from western media agencies. Whatever the shortcomings of the Russian political system may be, we have to remind ourselves that their head of state is prepared to spend several hours answering unscripted questions from potentially hostile journalists. None of our western leaders is prepared to undertake anything even approaching that amount of personal and political risk.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY5VoFafW_c?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]