MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin's approval rating has grown from 62.5% to 64% following his customary year-end news conference, as follows from opinion polls held by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center VTsIOM on December 9-15, 2019 and on December 19, 2019.

"The approval rating of Putin’s presidency on December 19, 2019 grew to 64% in contrast to last week’s level," VTsIOM said. "Asked directly about trust towards Putin 71% of the respondents answered in the affirmative. Last week, on December 9-15, Putin’s approval rating was at 62.5%. Asked directly about trust towards the current head of state 69.3% of the respondents said "yes" (26.3% of the answers were negative).

VTsIOM held several focus group studies in different cities of Russia, the sociologists explained. The audience’s reaction to the news conference was gauged in the real time mode.

The highest level of reactions was registered in relation to such topics as the situation in the health service and the outlook for resolving the problem of financing the health service, demographic situation and migrants, performance of the law enforcement system (the Ivan Golunov case), WADA resolution concerning Russian sports, struggle against heavy drinking, the situation in Ukraine and the outlook for normalization of relations between the two countries, calm discussion of the bill on domestic violence, the future of Russian-Japanese relations, the future of the volunteer movement and the indexing of pensions.