Russian attitude to the West still bad with tendency for changes – poll

Negative sentiment towards the West persists among Russians. China and Belarus are still the most popular nations with the Russian people.

According to a public opinion poll conducted by the independent research center Levada in late March, 73 percent of Russians were negative towards the United States, whereas for the European Union the figure was 64 percent. Ukraine was the third-least-loved nation on 55 percent.

Only 19 percent of Russians said they had a positive attitude to the US and just 25 percent expressed approval of the EU. Thirty-one percent said they had positive sentiments about Ukraine.

The current figures are an echo of last year’s and slightly differ from the ones registered in February, when Russians’ dislike of the West hit an all-time low.

However, deputy director of the Levada center, Aleksey Grazhdankin, wrote that it was too early to speak about a new tendency. “The fluctuations are not significant and remain roughly consistent with last summer’s,” he said.

Previously Grazhdankin explained the crisis of Russians’ trust in good relations with the West by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and on Western sanctions against Russia, which were largely perceived as a tool of economic attrition.

READ MORE: Foreign military threat real, most Russians believe – poll

In February, the state-owned Russian research center VTSIOM released a report revealing that 68 percent of Russian citizens feared an increased danger of foreign military aggression. At the same time, 49 percent consider the current state of Russian military as ‘good.’