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Most Russians say Russia has best ties with China — pollster

It is reported that the other most friendly countries include Belarus, India, Turkey and Kazakhstan

© Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

MOSCOW, August 31. /TASS/. More than half of Russians, or 55%, believe Russia has the most friendly ties with China, according to a poll by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) that was released on Wednesday.

"More than half of our fellow citizens - 55% - still believe that Russia has the strongest relations with China. That’s the highest level on record (up 10 percentage points from 2019)," the pollster said in a statement.

The other most friendly countries include Belarus (49% of respondents), India (22%), Turkey (17%) and Kazakhstan (13%). Another 11% of respondents noted strong ties between Russia and Serbia (up 9% from 2019), while 10% of those polled added Iran to the list (up 7% from 2019). The statement said Russians started to mention countries like UAE (3%), Saudi Arabia (2%) and Pakistan (2%).

The United States remains the main enemy of Russia, according to respondents. The level is the highest since the start of measurements (76%, up 9% from the data in 2019). Ukraine has become the second most popular answer (43%, down 10% from 2019). More than one-third of the respondents (39%) believe that the UK is a hostile nation, which is up 14% from 2019. Further down the list of unfriendly countries, according to Russians, are Germany (32%, plus 23% from 2019), Poland (28%), France (21%), Latvia (14%), Lithuania (12%), Estonia (11%). Finland (5%), Bulgaria (2%), Czech Republic (2%) made the list for the first time. Just 1% of those polled named Georgia as an unfriendly country, while 12% of respondents did so in 2019.

The all-Russian telephone survey was conducted on August 13. It covered 1,600 Russians aged upward of 18 years. The survey was based on a stratified random sample extracted from the full list of cell phone numbers active in Russia. The data are weighted by socio-demographic parameters. The margin of error with a probability of 95% does not exceed 2.5%.

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