By James Slavyanski
MOSCOW
Russian president Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the Russian economy might take up to two years to recover from the doldrums into which it has fallen.
He began his annual question and answer session with journalists by speaking about Russia's economic crisis. He said it could take two years to for a recovery to take hold, but he said as well that it might take less time than that.
He called the response of the country's central bank and the government "adequate."
During the session, Putin was confronted by a Ukrainian journalist, who asked how many Russian troops and vehicles had been sent to Ukraine, and how many Russians had died in the conflict between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists.
Putin claimed that the people who fought in Ukraine were "volunteers" and not "mercenaries" because they were not paid.
He called the military activities of the Kiev government a "punitive operation" and accusing it of stalling on signing the peace agreement agreed to in September in Minsk, the Belarussian capital.
He said, as well, that Russia's turn toward the east and its warming relations with China and India were not connected with politics but with the global economic situation.
Opposition figure Ksenia Sobchak asked Putin about the state's relationship to the harassment of opposition organizations and the spread of "hatred" of Ukraine by the state-run media.
Putin denied responsibility for any harassment of opposition organizations. But he avoided the question of the state-run press coverage of Ukraine.
Asked about Russia's recent military exercises in the Baltic, Putin said Russia was only defending its national interests. He accused the United States and NATO of extending their military infrastructure toward Russia's borders.
He promised to cooperate with the West on mutual interests but blamed the U.S. and NATO for what he called an "armed coup" in Ukraine in February.
Asked about the situation in Cyprus, he said that Russia "should strive for a balanced solution to the Cyprus question without imposing one from the outside."
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