- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India has been known to be a close friend of Russia for decades now and the current times, when Moscow has faced a backlash from the western world over its adventures in Ukraine, saw relations between the two old allies turning warmer, particularly over oil diplomacy.
But a poll taken in Russia has shown that the Kremlin doesn’t enjoy the most friendly tie with New Delhi but Beijing with 55 per cent of the country’s population speaking in its favour. The poll conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) said this on Wednesday (31).
“More than half of our fellow citizens – 55% – still believe that Russia has the strongest relations with China. That’s the highest level on record (up 10 percentage points from 2019),” the pollster said in a statement, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency said.
India was not even in the second spot but Belarus with 49 per cent of the respondents backing it. The South Asian nation was preferred by 22 per cent of the respondents, followed by Turkey (17 per cent) and Kazakhstan (13 per cent).
Eleven per cent said Russia had strong ties with Serbia (up from nine per cent in 2019) while 10 per cent backed Iran (up from seven per cent).
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had the backing of three per cent, two per cent and two per cent, respectively.
On the other hand, the US was seen as the main enemy with 76 per cent of the respondents saying so (up by nine per cent from what it was in 2019). Ukraine came second with 43 per cent (down 10 per cent from 2019), followed by the UK which 39 per cent felt as a hostile nation (up 14 per cent from 2019).
The survey was conducted over the telephone on August 13 and covered 1,600 Russians aged 18 and above.
