MOSCOW, March 13. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rating is at its highest in the last few years, results of a sociological survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Centre (WCIOM) made public on Thursday suggested.

According to sociologists, the rating of approval of presidential activity reached its highest of 71.6% for the last few years. Meanwhile, WCIOM experts noted that Russians have praised highly Vladimir Putin’s work already for a few weeks, as the rating of approval of Russian presidential activity has gone up 9.7% since mid-February.

“This takes place amid a political crisis in Ukraine, the situation in Crimea (64% of respondents named these events as the main ones last week) and in view of a victorious performance of Russian national team at the XXII Winter Olympic Games and the start of the Winter Paralympic Games (32%),” VCIOM indicated.

WCIOM experts also noted that Russians had approved the presidential work at a level of more than 60% in the last few years. The previous highest presidential electoral rating was reported in May 2012 (68.8%) right after Putin’s presidential inauguration, they recalled.

WCIOM has conducted an all-Russia survey on March 8-9, 2014. 1,600 people from 130 Russian settlements participated in the survey. Its margin of error does not exceed 3.4%.

It is noteworthy that experts of the Public Opinion Fund (FOM) had found similar figures. According to FOM survey results made public on Wednesday 70% of Russians would vote for Putin if presidential elections were held next Sunday.