MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. The outcome of an opinion poll showing that many Russians are ready to support a "conjured-up successor" to Russian President Vladimir Putin confirms that citizens trust his human resource policy, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov noted that he did not know anything about the details of the survey. "We may say that this (opinion poll results) only verifies the overwhelming confidence in the head of the Russian state and his human resource policy," he said.

On Wednesday, the Levada Center, an independent pollster, published its recent survey carried out on August 18-22 during which Russians were asked to answer a trick question on whether they support a politician named Andrey Semenov, who is supposedly running for president of Russia in 2018 and has secured Putin’s support. This is a mythical politician and the goal was to get an understanding on how the president’s authority sways Russians’ voting behavior.

According to the poll, based on interviews with 1,600 Russians from 48 regions, 18% of the respondents stated they were ready to vote for this imaginary candidate knowing that Putin backs him.