Over One-Third of Russians Regard Relations With Ukraine as 'Tense'

A sizable portion of Russian nationals thinks country’s relations with the Ukrainian government are either tense or hostile, a survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) poll published on Wednesday showed.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The majority now assesses the conditions inside the neighboring country as durably unfavorable.

"Opinions on Russian-Ukrainian relations do not become better in our society: 36 percent of Russians feel they are tense, 25 percent that they are hostile," the press release accompanying the poll's results said.

Meanwhile, 13 percent of those polled considered the relations between the countries as "cool." The share of those who described contacts with Ukraine in friendly terms – either as "friendly," "good-neighborly" or "relatively warm" — made up no more than 10 percent in total.

"Interest in political events in Ukraine among Russians has gone down a little since the start of the year: while in February — 77 percent followed events in the neighboring state with some regularity, 72 percent of our fellow citizens did that in July. There is a constant decline in the share of those people that follow the events constantly (from 38 percent in January 2015 to 18 percent in July 2017)," VCIOM noted.

The polling agency marked the correlation between answers and the age of the respondents: the younger they were, the less interest they showed.

When asked to describe the nature of the events in Ukraine, 37 percent of the respondents now characterize them as "anarchy", "lawlessness" or "disorder," while only 19 percent consider them a "war."

Based on the poll, the VCIOM sociologists managed to determine a "Ukrainian crisis index" that shows confidence in normalization of the situation in the neighboring country.

"A positive dynamic is seen against the background of a decline in the share of those who speak of escalation of tensions (from 71 percent to 52 percent) and a growth in the share of those who see no change (24 percent to 41 percent). Thus now, as before, the majority of those who have knowledge of the events see no improvement. Only 5 percent note signs of normalization," the press release on the poll said.

VCIOM’s research department chief Stepan Lvov noted that there was no reason for a change in the public opinion on Ukraine in recent months, estimating that the Ukrainian issue was changing from an irritant into an average source of negative emotions.

The VCIOM-Sputnik poll was carried out across Russia by telephone polling on July 5-7, 2017, covering over 1,800 people above 18 years.