Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday dropped a cryptic hint seen by some as a sign he may not serve another term while also staunchly defending his Kremlin policies in a marathon news conference.
Clocking in at four hours and twenty-five minutes, the question-and-answer session was one of the longest ever held by Putin in a format that has become an annual end-of-year tradition for the Russian leader.
Putin -- who will shortly mark two decades since Boris Yeltsin dramatically handed him the presidency at the start of 2000 -- faced the media with Russia still isolated internationally and speculation growing about his own plans when his mandate ends in 2024.
Many of the questions posed by some 1,800 reporters accredited for the event focused on bread-and-butter regional issues in a country that stretches from the Baltic to the Pacific, which Putin traditionally responded to with a stream of statistics.
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