MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. The level of trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed by Russian citizens dipped slightly by 1.4 percentage points (p.p.) to reach 78.9%, according to a new poll conducted on January 22-28 by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM).

The survey was conducted among 1,600 adult Russians.

"As many as 78.9% of the survey participants responded affirmatively when asked if they trusted Putin (a 1.4 p.p. dip), while approval of the president’s job performance went down by 1.3 p.p. to 76.2%," VCIOM said in statement presenting the survey findings.

The Russian government’s job performance met approval among 53.9% of respondents (a 0.3 p.p. dip), with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin receiving a job performance rating of 53.6% (up by 0.7 p.p.). A total of 61.9% of respondents said they trusted Mishustin, representing an uptick of 0.3 p.p.

Survey respondents also expressed their attitudes toward the heads of party factions in the State Duma, or lower house of the Russian parliament. Thus, 28% trust Gennady Zyuganov, longtime head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) (a 4.6 p.p. drop); 26.8% trust Sergey Mironov, leader of the A Just Russia-For Truth party (a 2.2 p.p. drop); 17.6% trust Leonid Slutsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) (a 0.2 p.p. drop); and 7.7% trust Alexey Nechayev, chairman of the New People party (a 0.5 p.p. drop).

As for the political parties per se, their levels of popular support stood at 43.3% for the ruling United Russia party (a 1.1 p.p. dip), 8.6% for the KPRF (a 0.1 p.p. drop), 8.3% for the LDPR (down by 0.2 p.p.), 4% for A Just Russia-For Truth (no change), and 4.8% for New People (a slight 0.6 p.p. uptick).