MOSCOW, January 11. /TASS/. Vladimir Putin’s confidence rating among ordinary Russians in 2017 reached a record-high of 57.7% in December, while presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak became more unpopular, the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center said on Thursday.

"In the rating of trust in politicians, Vladimir Putin’s figure reached a year’s record-high in December - 57.7%, and 56.8% during the last working week," the opinion poll said.

The performance approval rating for the president remained unchanged at 83.6% during the last week of December.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu comes second in the public confidence rating with 18%. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov takes the third place with 13.3% amid the declining trust in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (12.9%), the pollster said.

Some 2.9% of the survey’s respondents trusted businessman Pavel Grudinin, who was nominated as the Communist Party’s presidential candidate.

Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and presidential contender Vladimir Zhirinovsky has the lowest trust rating among politicians. Some 29.4% of those polled said they would not trust the firebrand lawmaker to solve important state issues. Prime Minister Medvedev comes second for the level of mistrust (14.7%).

Ksenia Sobchak, 36, Russian socialite and TV host, who decided to throw her hat into the ring for the March 2018 Russian presidential race, was among top three politicians who are not trusted. Public distrust for her grew 5.4% to 14.3% in December.

The nation’s leading polling agency conducted surveys in 2017 based on daily phone interviews with 600 respondents from at least 80 Russian regions. The margin of error does not exceed 1.9%