Moscow, 18 March 2022 (dpa/MIA) - Technical problems were to blame for Russian state television abruptly cutting away from President Vladimir Putin as he spoke at a huge patriotic rally in Moscow on Friday afternoon, the Kremlin says. Putin had just started speaking and was mid-sentence when the channel's live broadcast from Luzhniki Stadium suddenly switched to recorded images of old speeches and concert performances. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a server issue was behind the slip-up, the Interfax news agency reports. A short time later, the speech was shown in full on the Rossiya 24 TV channel. Putin spoke on stage to tens of thousands of flag-waving Russians. The rally was held to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea on March 18, 2014 but Putin also spoke about the current war in Ukraine.