A classic example of the Russian leader’s annual conference: just don’t mention the rouble or military involvement in Ukraine

With flirtatious questions about his love life, noir wisecracks, earthy animal metaphors and forceful anti-western rhetoric, on the surface this was a classic Vladimir Putin press conference. The Russian president puts on the marathon performance annually, assembling more than 1,000 journalists to hold forth on everything from geopolitics to parking tickets.

But this year was nevertheless somewhat different. If Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine earlier in the year only served to boost Putin’s ratings among the populace, the dramatic slide of the rouble in recent weeks has raised the spectre of previous Russian crises and undermined the main tenet of his 15-year rule over the world’s largest country: stabilnost (stability).

Putin, who opened by reeling off a number of positive economic indicators including the year’s “record harvest”, could not ignore the elephant in the room for long, but he brushed off the crisis as something that would pass. Indeed, it was not even fair to call it a crisis, he said, despite the rouble having lost around half of its value against the dollar and the euro since the beginning of the year.

“Our economy will overcome the current situation,” said Putin. “How much time will be needed for that? Under the most unfavourable circumstances, I think it will take about two years.”

The rouble, which started the year at 34 to the dollar, fell to a record low of nearly 80 on Tuesday before recovering on Wednesday, staying reasonably stable at between 60 and 63 to the dollar during Putin’s speech. This suggested the markets were neither horrified – nor hugely encouraged – by Putin’s words.

On the one hand, Putin is likely to have reassured them that drastic measures are not around the corner: there was no talk of capital controls, no hints that heads would roll in the government or at the central bank, as some had feared.

But at the same time, there was very little by way of concrete solutions. Essentially, the message was that Russia would wait for the oil price to go back up and then everything would be all right. Putin denied that the government’s own domestic policies and actions in Ukraine have been in any way responsible for the currency collapse.

Although the president went on for more than three hours, he did not come close to beating his record, set last year, when he took questions for four hours and 40 minutes. He began the session looking somewhat out of sorts and with a persistent cough, but soon got into his stride, and appeared to be enjoying himself, dodging the tougher questions and making jokes about the friendlier ones.

There were a number of combative questions during the session, most notably from a Ukrainian journalist who demanded Putin justify the “punitive operation” he had launched in east Ukraine.

“As the commander in chief of the army, what have you said to the families of dead Russian officers and soldiers,” asked the journalist, taking the rare opportunity to ask Putin in public about the Russian military intervention in east Ukraine that the Kremlin has denied ever happened.

But the format of the annual press conference means there is no chance for dialogue or follow-up questions. Events in east Ukraine “really are a punitive operation, but one carried out by the Kiev authorities, and not vice versa,” said Putin. On the issue of serving Russian soldiers and military equipment crossing the border, he simply dodged the question.

Unsurprisingly, Putin also used the conference to rail at the west. He said if Russia had not annexed Crimea, the west would have found another reason to target Russia, comparing the country to a bear.

“Sometimes I wonder, maybe the bear should just sit quietly, munch on berries and honey rather than chasing after piglets, maybe then, they would leave it alone? But no, they wouldn’t, because they will always try to chain it up. And as soon as they chain it up, they will pull out its teeth and claws.”

By teeth and claws, Putin said he meant Russia’s nuclear weapons. The west was circling round to destroy Russia, said Putin, so it could steal its natural resources.

“Once they’ve taken out his claws and his teeth, then the bear is no longer necessary. He’ll become a stuffed animal.”

Putin covered everything from the traffic police to farmers’ pensions in the three-hour session, but the two key themes were foreign policy and the economy, and there was much less of the minor regional issues that have often dominated the conferences in the past.

Nevertheless, there were surreal moments, such as when a man from the town of Kirov grabbed the microphone to complain that major supermarkets such as the French chain Auchan were refusing to stock the locally made brand of kvas, a fermented bread drink.

“I don’t want to offend Coca Cola,” said Putin, in support. “But we have our own traditional drinks.”

Within hours Auchan announced it would invite the kvas company to submit a tender to supply its product, now it had the leader’s blessing.

At one point, a regional journalist told Putin her aunt’s friend had requested her to ask him if he had time for much of a love life since his divorce. Putin smirked, said hello to the aunt’s friend, and said that “everything is fine” in that department.

The combative questions from Russia’s embattled liberal journalists were mainly about the newly toxic atmosphere in Russian society, and whether Putin felt guilty for talking about a “fifth column”, which heralded a renewed crackdown against the political opposition. Was he able to distinguish between opposition to his rule and being a traitor?

“It’s very difficult to answer that. I’m being honest. Because the border is very subtle. It’s difficult, I think, to give a scientific definition of where opposition ends and “fifth column” begins.

Quoting the poet Mikhail Lermontov, who Putin said was a patriot who had also been in opposition to the Tsarist authorities, the president said the key difference was whether people supported their country in their hearts or were serving the interests of another country. Russia’s opposition and human rights community have often been accused of serving the interests of the west.

Overall, the press conference was an attempt by Putin to portray business as usual. The take-home message for ordinary Russians was that the economic woes are a minor blip, and even if they are not, it is the west to blame for hounding Russia, and not Russia’s actions on the international stage that have caused the isolation.

If the economy continues to worsen, the Kremlin will be looking closely for signs of either a split in the elites or Putin’s popular support eroding, but the message on Thursday was that Putin himself is not worrying about either eventuality.

When it was suggested to him that some of his close circle have privately blamed him personally for Russia’s economic position, Putin cracked a broad smile and said, with his usual dark humour: “Give me their names!”

When asked if there might be a danger at some point of a palace coup in the future, he again smiled.

“Calm down. We don’t have any palaces. So there can’t be a palace coup.”