You're reading: Two thirds of Russians view current relations with U.S. as bad, expect no changes this year

Most of Russians (79 percent) believe that the United States plays a negative part on the world stage today, while the opposite is true for just 7 percent of people polled by Russia's Public Opinion Foundation.

The survey took place in 104 towns and villages of 53 regions of Russia on July 25-26. A total of 1,500 people answered questions during the survey. The survey found 38 percent though the global influence of the U.S. is decreasing. One in five (20 percent) believes that the American influence is increasing. Nothing has changed in this respect, 25 percent said.

Russians’ attitudes to America and U.S. President Barak Obama are more or less indifferent (46 percent in both cases) or bad (38 percent and 40 percent, respectively), while some positive perception is shown by, respectively, 10 percent and 3 percent of Russians

Russians’ attitude towards Obama has not changed recently for 47 percent of the participants, 39 percent said it had changed for the worse, while 1 percent said it was better than before.

According to the poll’s data, two thirds of Russians (65 percent) would characterize the current relations between Russia and the U.S. as bad. Every fourth Russian (25 percent) believed that the relations were partly good and partly bad, while only 3 percent of Russian residents could refer to the relations as the good ones.

The poll found 56 percent said that the Russia-America relations had gotten worse during the past year. Most of the people were sure it was due to the policies led by the U.S. (43 percent). Only 2 percent of the respondents said it was Russia’s fault, while every tenth Russian (10 percent) blames equally policies of the both countries for that.

Some 27 percent of Russians have seen no changes to the relations between the two countries during the past year, while 4 percent said they had noticed some improvements.

About the half of the participants (47 percent) have no expectations of changes to the Russia-U.S. relations in the near future, while 12 percent hope for improvements, 11 percent expect some worsening in this regard and 30 percent of Russians were undecided.

Today, the Russian authorities should make efforts to improve the relations with the U.S., 49 percent said. They believed that it would help keeping peace and building stronger international security (25 percent).

Every fifth Russian (21 percent) found that there was no point striving for good relationships with the U.S. “Russia is a powerful independent nation and we have no need in close contacts with the U.S.,” 6 percent of them said.

Less than one third (29 percent) remained undecided when asked the question “Should the Russian administration strive for better relations with the U.S.?”

The survey found 60 percent of Russians said that good relations were needed equally in the both countries. 13 percent believed that good relations were mostly wanted by the U.S., while 12 percent said it was Russia that needed them more. However, 4 percent found that neither Russia, nor the U.S. really wanted good relations between them.