MOSCOW, March 27. /ITAR-TASS/. The rating of approval to work of incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin has reached a new historic maximum of 82.3% in Russia at the end of March, results of a sociological survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (WCIOM) suggested.

Such a high level of approval to presidential work was reached mainly thanks to the Republic of Crimea’s accession in Russia and problems in Ukraine, as 71% of respondents named these events as main in the previous week, sociologists said.

The rating of approval to the country’s presidential activity keeps growing for the second month in succession. For the past week, according to WCIOM survey results, Putin’s rating grew from 75.7% to 82.3% and went up 1/4 from the start of the year from 60.6% in January to 74.4% in March. Thus, WCIOM noted that this figure was getting closely to Putin’s rating of 82.9% posted six years ago in February 2008.

For the past few months, according to the sociological poll, the level of approval to Putin’s work also has grown sharply among Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents and has reached a record level of 81.5% for the last week in the last six years.

Electoral rating of ruling United Russia party has also increased for the last few months to reach the highest level of 56.2% for the last five years. The United Russia electoral rating has been keeping at around 45% for two years.

The WCIOM nationwide poll was conducted on March 22-23. As many as 1,600 people in 130 settlements in 42 regions, territories and republics in Russia were polled. A margin of error does not exceed 3.4% in the survey.