Military, church & media top Russians’ trust rating

City residents and visitors to Moscow celebrate New Year’s Eve on Vasilyevsky Spusk, Moscow. © Eugene Odinokov

RT.com – 16/12/16

A recent survey by state-run pollster VTSIOM shows that the military forces, church and mass media top Russian citizens’ trust rating, while the courts, law enforcement bodies and political opposition occupy the lowest positions in the table.

“Our citizens continue to demonstrate their strongest support and approval for the military forces (87 percent), the Russian Orthodox Church (71.9 percent) and mass media (65.4 percent),” reads VTSIOM’s press release about the results of the December poll.

“The lowest results still belong to the court system (37.2 percent), political opposition (37 percent) and law enforcement bodies (31.4 percent),” researchers said.

They added that the Russian political opposition ranked lowest in the popular approval rating, with just under 35 percent of respondents expressing positive feelings towards opposition politicians.

VTSIOM also published the results of its study into the public attitude toward various politicians.

The poll showed that 86 percent of Russians currently approve of President Vladimir Putin’s work, up from 81.7 percent in November. Putin also ranked first in the rating of popular trust with 59.2 percent, followed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (14.8 percent) and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu (14.3 percent).

Just over 60 percent of respondents said that they approved of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s performance, with 62 percent saying they approved of the work of the government as a whole.

Earlier this week, President Putin told Japanese reporters that in his opinion his high popularity among the Russian people could be explained by the fact that he was working hard and openly perceived the results that, once achieved, would benefit the nation as a whole. He also noted that the president had no right to abuse the trust of the people.

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