MOSCOW, June 22. /TASS/. About half of Russians see no real threat of a military attack against the country and note the growing combat capabilities of the Russian armed forces, a poll conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center has shown.

"More than half of Russians (53%) see no real threat of a military attack against the country, and 38% of those polled said just the opposite (women more often than men - 43% vs 32%)," the pollster’s report said. "More than one third of our fellow countrymen (36%) consider the Russian army to be the best in the world, while 47% say it is one of the best."

Sociologists noted that the scale of the potential attack is seen by some respondents (41% of those who believe that such a threat exists) as substantial, while others (45%) tend to think that the conflict would be local.

"As early as February 2015, the military threat index, as seen by Russians, reached a historical maximum (since 1990). Amid the aggressive rhetoric of Western countries, escalation of the armed conflict in the Donbass region and anti-Russian sanctions, 68% Russians felt a real external military threat," the report quotes Konstantin Abramov, Director General of the VCIOM Foundation, as saying.

According to Abramov, the external threat began diminishing in October 2015, after the beginning of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ operation in Syria, with estimates of its likelihood dropping to the 2009 level.

The poll was conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center on June 16-17, 2017, among 1,200 respondents, the margin of error does not exceed 3.5%.