Putin’s Annual “Direct Line” Serves as Platform for State Disinformation

On December 19, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin conducted his yearly televised call-in show, “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,” now merged with his end-of-year press conference. The carefully orchestrated event, a fixture in Russia’s political landscape since 2001, offers a window into how the Kremlin shapes and disseminates disinformation narratives both domestically and internationally.

The format featured pre-selected questions allowing Putin to display apparent omniscience about local issues across Russia. Unlike previous years when he promised to resolve problems, this time Putin often claimed issues were already resolved. Personal questions, such as whether he believes in “love at first sight,” served to humanize the authoritarian leader—a classic emotional appeal technique designed to soften his image.

By including journalists from countries Russia designates as “unfriendly”—the United States, Britain, and France—the Kremlin created an illusion of openness. This strategic inclusion allowed state media to claim Russia permits free press while giving Putin a platform to dismiss Western criticism as inherently biased, employing false equivalence to undermine legitimate concerns about Russia’s actions.

The timing of the broadcast proved significant, following peace talks on Ukraine involving U.S. and Ukrainian representatives and coinciding with the European Union’s agreement to provide Ukraine with a €90 billion interest-free loan. Putin immediately addressed what he called “questions of war and peace,” claiming Russia remains ready for peaceful resolution while establishing impossible preconditions—namely Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbas and renouncement of NATO aspirations.

Throughout the broadcast, Putin employed projection tactics, shifting blame for the ongoing conflict onto Ukraine and Western nations. “The ball is entirely in the court of our Western opponents, above all the leaders of the Kyiv regime and their European backers,” he stated, despite Russia’s continuing military aggression. He repeated long-debunked narratives that Russia didn’t initiate the war but merely responded to Ukrainian hostilities, referring to the 2014 democratic transition in Ukraine as a “coup.”

The repetition strategy serves a calculated purpose: making falsehoods sound credible through constant reiteration. While this approach may not convince international audiences, it reinforces the Kremlin’s preferred narrative among domestic viewers at a time when Russian public support for the war has reportedly waned due to mounting human and economic costs.

On the military situation, Putin claimed Russian forces had seized initiative across all front lines, dismissing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s documented visit to Kupyansk as “fake” and asserting Ukraine lacks strategic reserves. He selectively highlighted economic data suggesting Russia maintains sufficient resources to continue the war despite international sanctions—messaging aimed at both domestic audiences and international negotiating partners.

When addressing Western discussions about using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, Putin described such measures as “robbery” and warned of “serious consequences,” implying European countries would suffer reputational damage and erode trust in the eurozone.

In response to a BBC question about future military operations, Putin employed another common disinformation technique—delegitimizing criticism by portraying it as hostile. “Are we really going to attack Europe? What nonsense is this?” he asked rhetorically, claiming Western leaders fabricate Russian threats to distract from domestic policy failures. Yet contradictorily, he later threatened “unprecedented escalation” if Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave faced security challenges.

Putin’s annual broadcast represents more than political theater—it serves as the primary source for disinformation that subsequently flows through Russian state media and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference networks globally. By controlling the message from the highest level of government, the Kremlin seeks to normalize aggression, undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, and weaken trust in Western institutions.

Recognizing these manipulation tactics is essential for maintaining factual integrity in public discourse about Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and its broader geopolitical ambitions.