Russia 2nd Only to US in Military Potential Among G20 States

Russia comes second only to the United States among the G20 states with regard to military capabilities, Julia Baskakova, a representative of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center’s (VCIOM), said Thursday, citing preliminary results of an expert study.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – VCIOM and the Valdai international discussion group of experts are jointly carrying out a project dubbed "Index of readiness to the future," studying G20 countries' competitiveness on a range of economic and political criteria. The first preliminary results with regard to security, sovereignty, culture and communication criteria were presented earlier in the day.

"With regard to the indicators of the military force, Russia is ranked second after the United States, on indexes, on the number of police officers everything is sufficiently good in Russia. On the other hand, if you have a look at the level of confidence in the police, Russia turns out to be next to the last among the G20 states," Baskakova said.

The survey’s preliminary results also showed that Russia held 14th or 15th place among the G20 countries with regard to the issue of security, and was ranked 12th on the culture and communication criterion, according to Baskakova.

Baskakova noted that the experts analyzed the G20 countries's security and sovereignty based on several criteria, namely, military potential, number of police officers, popular confidence in the police service, criminal statistics, terror threat levels, and subjective assessment of personal security.