MOSCOW(Sputnik) — The majority of Russian citizens believe that their country is developed and progressive, a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) showed.
The poll conducted in December 2016 revealed that 65 percent of respondents believed they lived in a developed country and about a third (32 percent) thought the economic situation in Russia would get better in 2017, while 40 percent of the respondents believed that the social inequality would grow and 25 percent said Russia was an underdeveloped country.
The Russian economy suffered a setback in 2014, as the ruble lost about half of its value against the US dollar amid low global oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.
According to the Russian Economic Development Ministry, the economy started slowly to recover in the wake of improvement of oil prices expectations, after OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to reduce oil extraction volumes.
