Russians have turned more hostile towards the west than at any time since the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the country’s leading independent pollster said on Thursday. Levada-Centre’s latest poll about sentiment towards foreign countries shows that since the escalation of the crisis in eastern Ukraine, anti-American sentiment has shot to its highest level since 1990; negative sentiment towards the EU for the first time exceeds positive feelings; and there is a sharp upturn in friendly feelings towards China. The data illustrates how profoundly the Ukraine crisis has changed attitudes in Europe and highlights the challenge leaders from the G7 countries, Russia and Ukraine face as they pursue diplomatic efforts on the sidelines of the D-Day anniversary in France. Seventy-one per cent of respondents in the poll, conducted last month, described their feelings towards the US as “basically bad” or “very bad”, the highest number since Levada started polling such sentiment in 1990. The number of those feeling very negative towards America jumped by 10 percentage points compared with the previous poll in March. Sixty per cent expressed negative sentiment towards the EU, outnumbering those with positive feelings for the first time since 2003. And sentiment towards China, which Moscow has increasingly courted as a counterbalance to the west, has improved, with 77 per cent of respondents expressing positive feelings and negative sentiment dropping to a historic low of 8 per cent. - Financial Times ft/intl/cms/s/0/8510a6e4-eca3-11e3-8963-00144feabdc0.html#axzz33qCUkRMy
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 07:15:51 +0000
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