Paul Goble
Staunton, June 17 – The Levada Center polling agency continues to survey Russians on which countries they consider to be the most unfriendly and the most friendly. Surprisingly, even though Russia is at war with Ukraine, a higher percentage of them identify the US, the UK, and Poland as unfriendly than say that about Ukraine; and fewer say it is that compared to a year ago.
At the other end of the spectrum, more Russians identify Belarus, China and Kazakhstan as friendly countries, although it is possible the latter may lose that position given withering criticism of its government by Moscow (newizv.ru/news/society/17-06-2022/ukraina-ne-glavnyy-vrag-rossiyane-nazvali-druzhestvennye-i-nedruzhestvennye-strany).
The changes in the percentages of Russians identifying this or that country as friendly or unfriendly over the past year are striking, with the share of Russians making such identifications increasing in almost all cases. Exceptions concerning friendly countries are Azerbaijan about which there was a decline from 11 to 10 percent and Syria with a fall from nine to eight.
At the other end, the only countries Russians felt less inclined this year to identify as unfriendly were Ukraine where the share doing so fell from 40 percent to 31 percent and Estonia, where there was a decline from nine percent to seven percent doing so, the Levada Center reported.
There were two new countries in the top 10 of those Russians identified this year as friendly, Serbia and Venezuela. But there was no change in the top 10 of those they said were unfriendly.
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