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One in two Russian citizens sees country as great power, survey shows — leading pollster

According to the survey, three-quarters of Russians expect changes for the better in the near future

MOSCOW, February 29. /TASS/. The number of citizens who consider Russia to be a great power has grown by five-fold since 2013, with 50% of respondents now holding this opinion, according to a poll conducted in January by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), which released a report on the poll findings on its website.

"Today, every second Russian [citizen] can give an unambiguous answer to the question of whether Russia will become a great power in the coming years: 50% are convinced that it already is one. Over the past 11 years, the percentage of adherents to this position has experienced a five-fold increase: back in 2013, only one in ten (10%) classified our country as a great power," the report says.

Meanwhile, every third respondent (30%) believes that Russia will become a great power. Thus, in total, the percentage of poll respondents who are adherents of Russia’s great power status comes to fully 80%.

According to VCIOM, 45% of Russians said that the future of the country is predictable (in June 2023, this figure was 46%; in 2022 it was 41%; and in 2021 it was 36%). The share of those who hold the opposite viewpoint declined over the period from 34% to 28%. In addition, in the January survey, 40% of respondents said that they can clearly imagine what Russia will look like in five years.

According to the survey, three-quarters of Russians (75%) expect changes for the better in the near future, including 40% who believe that in 8-10 years the situation in the country will have improved noticeably and that Russia will have become a strong, prosperous nation. Thus, over the past six months, the share of respondents with this point of view has grown by 9 percentage points (p.p.) (up from 31% in June 2023), reverting to the figure recorded in 2022.

The percentage of those who believe that the country's leadership has a long-term strategy for the development of Russian society reached a record-high 61% (June 2023: 57%; 2022: 54%; 2021: 40%). Only 18% of respondents disagreed with this judgment (down 11 p.p. from 2021).

The Russia-wide VCIOM-Sputnik telephone survey was conducted on January 26-27, 2024. The poll surveyed 1,600 Russians over the age of 18. The margin of error at a 95% probability rate does not exceed 2.5%.

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