Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 14 – A new Levada
Center poll finds that Russians’ antipathy toward the US and Ukraine has fallen
significantly over the last year while their attitudes toward immediate
neighbors have improved, the result in large measure, experts say, of declines
in Russian interest in geopolitics and increases in their attention to domestic
problems.
The poll found that negative
attitudes toward the US and Ukraine have fallen sharply over the past 12 months
from 78 percent to 67 percent and 49 percent to 40 percent respectively, while
positive views of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan have all
increased (levada.ru/2019/06/14/soyuzniki-i-vragi-sredi-stran/).
When Russians feel they are
isolated, Levada Center director Lev Gudkov says, they look to those nearby
whom they feel closer to. As for Ukraine and the US, the shift in attitudes
reflects both lack of news about violence in Ukraine and continuing hopes that
Donald Trump will improve ties (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2019/06/14/804146-vragami-ssha-ukrainu).
Russian
attitudes toward Ukraine and the US also reflect domestic developments inside
the country, he says. Many feel the Kremlin has been stealing from them to pay
for its foreign adventures and thus are less likely to accept its narrative
about the hostility of the US and Ukraine than they were.
Andrey
Makarkin, a Moscow political analyst and commentator, agrees. He says that the share
of Russians expressing negative attitudes toward the US and Ukraine has fallen “because
the interest of people in geopolitics has: they are more agitated by prices and
pay and not by what is happening in the world.”
When
people become less interested in geopolitics, he suggests, they also want to
identify those abroad who remain on their side, the explanation, he suggests,
for why Russians are more positive about their immediate neighbors than they
were a year ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment