Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted at a meeting with war veterans that he would not have been able to listen to his own speech on Tuesday before the Federal Assemblywrites The Moscow Times.

“Of course, it is very difficult to listen to everything. Almost two hours. I probably would have a hard time listening to it myself if I had to. It is easier to talk than to listen,” Putin said, reports the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Despite Putin’s criticism of his own speech, representatives of the Federal Assembly applauded the Kremlin leader 53 times during the event, including standing ovations four times.

This year, Putin’s speech was the second longest he has ever given as president: 1 hour 45 minutes, compared to 1 hour 57 minutes in 2018.

In the last hundred meters, the language changed

Initially, it was supposed to last 1 hour and 20 minutes. But the night before, Putin made changes to the text, extending it by 20 minutes, wrote Andriy Kolesnikov, a journalist of the Russian publication “Kommersant”.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Vladimir Putin, believes that the Russian president recently added to the suspension of Russia’s participation in the nuclear weapons treaty with the United States.

According to Gallyamov, speechwriters “always try to make the text logical”, and in Tuesday’s message, Putin switched from talking about the West to other topics, including the economy, and only at the end announced the most resonant decision.

“If you remove the last part about the West, you will get a completely logical text. But now the subject of the treaty on the SNO was clearly inserted at the last moment and there was no time to comb through the text,” Gallyamov said.

Follow the latest events of the 365th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.