Russia has the best ties with China: Russians says
New Delhi: A poll released by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) on Wednesday saws that more than half of Russians, or 55 percent, believe Russia has the most friendly ties with China.
“More than half of our fellow citizens – 55% – still believe that Russia has the strongest relations with China. That’s the highest level on record (up 10 percentage points from 2019),” the pollster said in a statement.
The other most friendly countries include Belarus (49% of respondents), India (22%), Turkey (17%), and Kazakhstan (13%).
Another 11% of respondents noted strong ties between Russia and Serbia (up 9% from 2019), while 10% of those polled added Iran to the list (up 7% from 2019). The statement said Russians started to mention countries like UAE (3%), Saudi Arabia (2%), and Pakistan (2%).
The United States remains the main enemy of Russia, according to respondents. The level is the highest since the start of measurements (76%, up 9% from the data in 2019). Ukraine has become the second most popular answer (43%, down 10% from 2019). More than one-third of the respondents (39%) believe that the UK is a hostile nation, which is up 14% from 2019.
Further down the list of unfriendly countries, according to Russians, are Germany (32%, plus 23% from 2019), Poland (28%), France (21%), Latvia (14%), Lithuania (12%), Estonia (11%). Finland (5%), Bulgaria (2%), and the Czech Republic (2%) made the list for the first time. Just 1% of those polled named Georgia as an unfriendly country, while 12% of respondents did so in 2019.
The all-Russian telephone survey was conducted on August 13. It covered 1,600 Russians aged upward of 18 years. The survey was based on a stratified random sample extracted from the full list of cell phone numbers active in Russia. The data are weighted by socio-demographic parameters. The margin of error with a probability of 95% does not exceed 2.5%.
(Vinayak)
