This concludes RFE/RL's live blog coverage of Putin's Direct Line program.
Moderators bring the Direct Line to an end and Putin thanks everyone for their help. Four hours and nine minutes.
They ask if he is ever ashamed. "That is a serious question," he says. "Of course I am, like any person." He recalls an episode in the early 2000s when "the situation was very difficult." Says he ran into an elderly woman late one evening who fell on her knees in front of him and gave him a note, begging for help. (Putin begins to choke up.) Putin says he gave the note to an aide but it was lost and he never read it. He said he has received many such notes over the years, but he is ashamed that he never learned what that woman needed. Putin nearly cries as he recalls the story.
They ask if he is tired of being president. "No, otherwise I wouldn't have run for another term," he says.
They ask him "what is the main problem facing Russia." Putin says the main problem is to improve labor productivity and, on that basis, transform the economy.
They ask Putin to tell a joke about himself. He says that he has heard many, but declines to tell one.
- By Carl Schreck
Putin took a swipe at Pavel Grudinin, the Communist Party politician who ran a surprisingly feisty presidential campaign in the election last year that handed Putin another six-years in office. Asked whether he might be prepared to appoint Grudinin as his prime minister, Putin suggested the politician's foreign bank accounts preclude him from the job.
Payback?
Now they are showing the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, who has rushed out to the region of Krasnoyarsk that has no schools and is now meeting with locals, as Putin ordered him to do. They show governor talking and people listening.
On military spending:
"We are the only great military power in the world that is scaling down its military spending.... Despite our small military expenses, we not only managed to secure military and nuclear parity but also are two-three steps ahead of our competitors. Because there is no other country in the world that has such technologically highly advanced weapons as we have, I mean our hypersonic missiles complex."
Moderator notes the Direct Line has already been going for four hours.